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Within emotion-focused therapy (EFT), the client’s ability to express and reflect on core emotional experiences is seen as fundamental to constructing the self and to entering into a change process. For this study, we 1) examine storytelling contexts in which clients do not disclose the emotional impact of their narrative, and 2) identify the interactional practices through which EFT therapists subsequently call attention to what the client may have felt. In doing so, we examine client stories drawn from video-taped individual psychotherapy sessions involving clinically depressed clients. Client stories and therapists’ responses to these stories were analysed using conversation analytic methods. Three different therapist response types were identified: eliciting, naming and illustrating the emotional impact of the client’s prior narrative. These responses also were found to differ in terms of how effectively they could display empathy and secure affiliation with clients. The implications of this work for therapeutic practice are discussed.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of three women breast-cancer survivors and the associated experiences of their partners. Individual in-depth interviews were conducted using a narrative approach, and the six accounts were analysed using the grounded theory method. The results describe the marked variation in the meaning of the experience among the participants, and the perceived change in each woman’s identity from prior to her cancer diagnosis to the time of the interview. The findings are presented in three sections: (1) Three Narrative Themes, the themes, Back to ‘Normal’, Rebirth and Turning Point, that represent the perceived change in each woman’s identity; (2) The Construction of Meaning, the shared characteristics that relate to meaning construction and identity; (3) Integration, the integration in each self-narrative of past and present self-understandings. The findings are compared with the existing literature, and the implications of different interpretations of self and change in the cancer experience are discussed. The limitations of the study are discussed with recommendations for future research.