Living into the story: Agency and coherence in a longitudinal study of narrative identity development and mental health over the course of psychotherapy.
Jonathan M. Adler (2012)
Published
Feb 1, 2012
Journal
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · Vol. 102 · No. 2
Longitudinal psychotherapy study links narrative agency (spoiler: correlation) and coherence (spoiler: no correlation) to changes in narrative identity and mental health.
SummaryAI
This paper is one of the first intensive, multiwave longitudinal tests of whether narrative identity changes alongside (and ahead of) mental health change during psychotherapy. Across ~600 session-by-session narratives from 47 adult clients, agency (a sense of control and self-directed action) reliably increased, while narrative coherence did not show a consistent upward trend. Increases in agency were tied to better mental health and, in lagged models, agency shifts came before subsequent symptom improvement — even after accounting for time, neuroticism change, and ego development. The implication is that cultivating more agentic self-stories may be an early marker (and potentially a mechanism) of therapeutic improvement across orientations in naturalistic care.
Method SnapshotAI
Longitudinal study of psychotherapy clients analyzing narratives over time alongside mental health measures.
BackgroundAI
Basic knowledge of narrative identity, psychotherapy process, and common mental health outcome measurement.
A very interesting longitudinal study (which is rare) of agency & coherence in the context of psychotherapy. There is a correlation between well-being and agency (positive), but there is none at all with coherence. This is very strange and therefore deserves further study.