Gloria decoded : an application of Robert Langs' communicative approach to psychotherapy

• Main Author: Daniels, Debbie
• Published: Middlesex University 2012
• Subjects: 616.89
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.570843

The aim of this research was to explore the theories espoused by psychoanalyst Robert Langs pertaining to frame violations of the therapeutic framework. Langs proposes that frame violations activate negative responses in the patient which become encoded in the patient’s narrative. This theory was investigated through analysing transcripts from three filmed psychotherapy sessions with three therapists and one female patient. Luborsky’s quantitative Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method was utilised to extract themes from the patient’s manifest narrative in the sessions. The aim was to demonstrate similarities between the patient’s responses towards other people and towards the therapist. A qualitative approach was also utilised to analyse the unconscious encoded narrative in the sessions. It was discovered that both approaches revealed that there was evidence that the patient responded towards the therapist in the same way in which she responded to other people. It could be demonstrated that there was considerable evidence to suggest that the patient’s narrative about other people had been activated by the therapists’ frame violations and the deviant frame setting. The conclusion was that the results supported Langs’ theory but posed a challenge to Freud’s theory on transference.