Innovative Moments in Psychotherapy: From Narrative Outputs to the Semiotic-Dialogical Processes

In this chapter, we shed light on the microprocesses underlying narrative change in psychotherapy, by adopting a semiotic-dialogical perspective over meaning making. We first describe the innovative moment’s model for analyzing the psychotherapeutic process. According to this model, change occurs through the emergence and expansion of innovative moments (IMs), which are all the occurrences in therapy that are exceptions in relation to the rules of behaving, thinking, and feeling that organize the problematic self-narrative of the client (i.e., usual framework of understanding and experiencing). We then present a microgenetic method of analysis, which allows understanding and depicting how IMs are amplified and differentiated from the problematic self-narrative; or on the contrary, how they are absorbed by it, attenuating the innovative potential that they have for change.