Emotions, stories and meaning
I wrote this reflective essay for our theory and practice class at the University of Rochester. The professor asked us to reflect after learning about affect-focused, constructivist, existential, and other approaches to therapy.
Reflective Essay 1
This essay critically reflects on my learnings from Module 1, which introduced affect-focused, constructivist, existential, and other approaches to therapy.
First, I will look at affect-focused therapy. In Chapter 1 of The Transforming Power of Affect, Fosha (2000) describes affect as our raw, immediate feelings. She argues that affect is the fundamental basis of the mind and human experience. Psychological problems arise when people are unable to process their affect into meaningful, conscious emotions. Fosha (2000) describes effective therapy as an environment between therapist and client in which the client feels safe enough to lower their defenses and regulate anxiety to fully experience their core affect. Experiencing core affect can lead to transformational healing, as it allows individuals to extract meaning from repressed emotions and develop new ways of attending and acting in the world. Frederickson (2013) similarly emphasizes feelings as central and encourages therapists to help clients access them. Greenberg (2006) talks about a specific type of affect-focused therapy called emotion-focused therapy (EFT). The EFT therapist must act as an “emotion coach” helping the client through stages of awareness, regulation, transformation, and reflection.
Reflecting on these ideas, this raises several important questions. Theoretically, I can see tremendous value in bringing forth emotions in therapy; practically, however, I see defenses and anxiety as possibly being too strong. How does the therapist skillfully remove a client’s defenses and help regulate anxiety to get to their core affect? The therapist must balance emotional activation with the creation of a safe, emotionally regulated environment; humanistic skills should be leveraged in close tandem with affect techniques.
My second question is, some clients, such as those with borderline traits, suffer from an excess of emotionality. In cases like this, what should the therapist do to manage the excess emotions? It seems the task here should be to first stop the over-emotionality.
Secondly, I wish to refer to our learnings about Constructivist therapies. Fall et al. (2023) describe how Constructivist therapists believe truth is subjective and individuals actively create their own meaning by a process of construction. Construction occurs within social and experiential contexts. Fall et al. (2023) describe approaches such as: Solution-Focused Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Mahoney’s Constructivist Psychotherapy. Constructivists tend to be collaborative and flexible and skeptical of fixed categories and diagnoses. Mahoney and Marquis (2002) describe how order tends to emerge from chaotic and complex systems. They see the process of construction in psychology as a social developmental process, allowing an individual to move from disorganization back to a higher order state of organization. Mahoney and Marquis (2002) also see emotions as critically important to Constructivist therapy; they aren’t everything, as affect-focused therapies may believe. Guiffrida et al. (2019) describe working with a client who has a different belief system from yours, one that you may find harmful, and how a constructivist mindset can enable an appreciation of diverse worldviews.
Reflecting on these ideas, I felt that a constructivist worldview resonates with how I tend to see things. However, this perspective raises important questions. If everything is subjective, does this imply that all beliefs are equally valid? For example, if a client holds a belief that is harmful to themselves or others? In practice, constructivism cannot be value-neutral. While it encourages diverse perspectives, therapists must also uphold the ethical responsibilities of our profession. Furthermore, not all subjective views are equal; some subjective perspectives may be more adaptive or ethically grounded than others. As a practitioner, I wish to strive to hold in parallel the tension between not judging the client but also allowing for recognition that some subjective positions are more adaptive than others.
I also reflected on the assumption that individuals are responsible for their own meaning. Potentially, it’s not right for everyone to be expected to be a meaning maker; some people may be better suited as meaning consumers. Meaning consumers should rely on the religion or myth created by others within their cultural, religious, or communal systems. Therefore, constructivism to me does not fully account for one’s personal ability, and the balance between freedom and ethical responsibility to others.
Finally, I wish to refer to our learnings around existential, positive, and multicultural psychologies. May and Yalom (1989) take a close look at existential psychology, akin to Constructivism, rising with the existential and similarly minded philosophical schools and focusing on the individual and their active agency in creating meaning. Existential psychology differs, however, in that it believes that each individual’s deep anxiety comes from one of only four possible existential sources: the fear of death, the problem of personal freedom (versus responsibility), the isolation of existence, and the meanings we make. Existential philosophy also places less emphasis on the past and more on the present moment, or “here-and-now,” and sees itself more as a psychological frame, rather than a complete theoretical orientation.
Hoffman et al. (2016) also look at existential psychology, and they compare it alongside positive psychology and multicultural psychology. Positive psychology believes that well-being can be universally and objectively defined. In this sense, positive psychology, alongside existential psychology, discounts culture to a degree, believing human strengths are individualistic. Multicultural psychology believes that human well-being and strengths must be defined in relation to culture; no objective or universal measures of well-being are possible. Multicultural psychology also shares a focus on meaning-making; however, it believes meaning comes from the culture, not the individual.
Reflecting on these ideas, whilst I value the perspectives of existential psychology and its focus on the four big problems of human existence (death, freedom, isolation, and meaning), I question whether these are really of universal human concern. What about those who are successfully embedded in a culture? Aren’t their needs around death, freedom, isolation, and meaning satisfied by the meaning-making functions of their culture (e.g., myth or religion)? It appears to me that existential psychology could be especially relevant for people who feel disconnected from a culture. In this sense, I understand existential psychology as particularly applicable when an individual experiences cultural or existential disconnection, or a crisis in their life occurs, and one needs to take on the burden of meaning-making personally. Positive psychology can be understood similarly. If someone seeks to define well-being at the level of an individual, this is valid; however, a counterpoint must exist to define well-being at a level other than the individual.
In conclusion, affect-focused therapies center on immediate feelings and emotions as the core of the human experience. Affect-focused therapy involves breaking through defenses and processing emotion. Constructivist therapy values the individual's subjective narrative meaning-making capability as prime in turning chaos into order. Finally, existential, positive, and multicultural psychologies also place emphasis on meaning-making. Existential does this by exploring the big questions in life in the present moment, positive psychology, by trying to understand the universal constituents of the good life, and multicultural psychology by placing any understanding of psychology subject to culture.
References
Fosha, D. (2000). The transforming power of affect: A model for accelerated change. Basic Books.
Fall, K. A., Holden, J. M., & Marquis, A. (2023). Theoretical models of counseling and psychotherapy (12th ed.). Taylor & Francis. 
Frederickson, J. (2013). Co-creating change: Effective dynamic therapy techniques. Seven Leaves Press.
Greenberg, L. S. (2006). Emotion-focused therapy: A synopsis. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 36(2), 87–93.
Guiffrida, D., Tansey, M., & Miller, D. (2019). A constructive approach to help counselors work with clients who express discriminatory views. Journal of Counseling & Development, 97(1), 105–112. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcad.12240
Hoffman, L., Granger, N., Jr., & Mansilla, M. (2016). Multiculturalism and meaning in existential and positive psychology. In P. Russo-Netzer, S. E. Schulenberg, & A. Batthyany (Eds.), Clinical perspectives on meaning: Positive and existential psychotherapy (pp. 111–130). Springer.
Mahoney, M. J., & Marquis, A. (2002). Integral constructivism and dynamic systems in psychotherapy processes. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 22(5), 794–811.
May, R., & Yalom, I. (1989). Existential psychotherapy. In R. Corsini & D. Wedding (Eds.), Current psychotherapies (4th ed., pp. 262–292). F. E. Peacock.
