Innovative moments on online Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for alcohol dependence: a case study

Online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a promising intervention for reducing alcohol consumption among the population. However, due to the lack of studies in the area, the present study aims to evaluate the effects of the therapeutic process of online CBT for alcohol addicts in a Brazilian sample. Thirty-six recordings of six male participants diagnosed with alcohol dependence, who sought treatment to cease or reduce the substance’s consumption, were analysed using the Innovative Moments Coding System (IMCS). The IMCS is a method that analyses changes occurred during the therapeutic process. The results suggested: (1) an increase in the number of Innovative Moments (IMs) from the beginning to the end of the sessions in all analysed cases, and (2) a correlation between a decrease in the doses of alcohol consumption at the end of the sessions and the increase of IMs. The present study successfully applies for the first time the IMCS in alcohol dependence and proved to be an adequate method to evaluate the online therapy process for this sample. However, it is necessary to conduct further research to confirm the IMCS’s effectiveness for alcohol dependence

Differences Between Subclinical Ruminators and Reflectors in Narrating Autobiographical Memories: Innovative Moments and Autobiographical Reasoning

Reasoning may help solving problems and understanding personal experiences. Ruminative reasoning, however, is inconclusive, repetitive, and usually regards negative thoughts. We asked how reasoning as manifested in oral autobiographical narratives might differ when it is ruminative versus when it is adaptive by comparing two constructs from the fields of psychotherapy research and narrative research that are potentially beneficial: innovative moments (IMs) and autobiographical reasoning (AR). IMs captures statements in that elaborate on changes regarding an earlier personal previous problem of the narrator, and AR capture the connecting of past events with other parts of the narrator’s life or enduring aspects of the narrator. A total of N = 94 university students had been selected from 492 students to differ maximally on trait rumination and trait adaptive reflection, and were grouped as ruminators (N = 38), reflectors (N = 37), and a group with little ruminative and reflective tendencies (“unconcerned,” N = 19). Participants narrated three negative personal experiences (disappointing oneself, harming someone, and being rejected) and two self-related experiences of more mixed valence (turning point and lesson learnt). Reflectors used more IMs and more negative than positive autobiographical arguments (AAs), but not more overall AAs than ruminators. Group differences were not moderated by the valence of memories, and groups did not differ in the positive effect of narrating on mood. Trait depression/anxiety was predicted negatively by IMs and positively by AAs. Thus, IMs are typical for reflectors but not ruminators, whereas the construct of AR appears to capture reasoning processes irrespective of their ruminative versus adaptive uses.

Psychotherapeutic potential of online self-help groups

Previous research has found that online self-help groups related to healthcare can be therapeutic. These therapeutic effects often stem from social support conveyed by respondents; however, relevant studies appear to have overlooked the therapeutic potential of thread openers’ narratives. This article investigates thread openers’ narratives in 80 threads from four online self-help groups for anxiety and depression. The data analysis focuses on unique outcomes (UOs), referring to opportunities for therapeutic change to occur, which are conceptualized within the framework of innovative moments (IMs). The findings indicate that the presence of IMs is what makes online narratives therapeutic, but that they diminish gradually through interactions with respondents. This decline can arguably be attributed to respondents’ provision of unsolicited support, and this implies that most users do not find resolution for their problem through participating in online self-help groups.

Facilitating Narrative Change in Career Construction Counseling

Career Construction Counseling fosters client change by evoking and elaborating innovative moments in client narratives. In this article, we describe four types of dialogues that counselors may use to prompt narrative novelty and foster client change: (a) identify and evaluate the effects of innovative moments, (b) highlight contrasting self-positions, (c) ask about changes achieved, (d) promote a meta-perspective on change. Vignettes from a case are used to illustrate how to use IM markers as a heuristic guide for when to engage in these four types of dialogues.

Yeast and leaven – craftsmen, blacksmiths? (names of notions in the Vepsian ethnolinguistic space)

Introduction: the article analyzes the Vepsian terms for yeast and leaven. This vocabulary is interesting from the point of view of motifs of nomination, preservation of the Baltic-Finnish etymological heritage, innovative moments and the results of contact phenomena observed both in the direct borrowing of the necessary lexemes into the Vepsian language, and in the semantic and grammatical influence on the group of this vocabulary. Objective: to study a group of vocabulary associated with the names of yeast and leaven, to identify the motifs of nomination, their originality and innovativeness in the Baltic-Finnish etymological space, and to determine the results of contact and universal phenomena. Research materials: Vepsian names of yeast and leaven collected in the fields, from archival and published sources. Results and novelty of the research: the article defines the motifs of Vepsian terms – the names of yeast and leaven. Their bases are verbal lexemes that can reflect the process of work of yeast and leaven during dough preparation (noustatada ‘to raise’ → noustatez ‘rise (of dough)’; hapata ‘to sour; to ferment’ → hapatez, hapišt ‘oxidation; fermentation’; muigota ‘to sour; to ferment’→ muigotez ‘oxidation; fermentation’). Special attention is paid to attracting some language metaphors to the nomination [rand ‘yeast’ (lit. ‘the edge of the leavened dough’); sep ‘yeast’ (lit. ‘blacksmith; craftsman’)]. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the determination of the motifs of nomination of terms and their etimologization – Baltic-Finnish (noustatez, hapatez), innovative Vepsisms (muigotez) and the reasons of their emergence, as well as obscure terms, which are offered the interpretation by the author (rand, sep). Special attention is drawn to the semantic universal realities in the studied group of terms caused by the invasion of metaphors into the nomination, which in this case turned out to be characteristic for related and neighboring unrelated languages [Vepsian sep ‘yeast’ (lit. ‘blacksmith’), Tver Karelian seppä ~ šeppä ‘yeast’, Estonian dialectal meistari, töök, töömees ‘yeast’ (lit. ‘master; working man’) and Russian master ‘leaven’].