International Journal of Existential

Psychology & Psychotherapy

What Expert Therapists Do:

A Constructive Narrative Perspective
Donald Meichenbaum1

We each spend a great deal of time, money

and effort in search of excellence. We attend
concerts, dance recitals, and athletic events
in the hope of catching a stellar
performance. We have favorite restaurants
where the chef has a perfect touch. We
delight in our favorite novelist, singer, or
actor. We try to hire experts to help us with
our computers, our taxes, our cars, and our
health, and when in distress we may seek the
assistance of an expert therapist.
Psychologists have studied many types
of experts and compared them to their less
accomplished and novice colleagues (See
Meichenbaum and Biemiller, 1998 Chapter
2 for a review of this literature.).
This paper is designed to consider the
factors that contribute to an expert
therapist. For a moment, consider who is the
best psychotherapist in your community,
besides yourself. If you, or a family
member, or a friend, needed counseling, to
whom would you go for help? Moreover, if
you had an opportunity to watch this
nominated therapist conduct therapy, exactly
what would you see him or her do? Before
reading on, take a moment and generate a
list of the attributes and activities that you
think an expert therapist would evidence
and engage in.
The literature on expertise is
fascinating as it highlights that experts differ

Donald Meichenbaum is the Distinguished

Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology
at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He is also the
Research Director at the Melissa Institute for
Violence Prevention and Treatment of Victims of
Violence in Miami, Florida. Correspondence
regarding this article should be sent to
dmeich@watarts.uwaterloo.ca.

www.existentialpsychology.org

Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2004

from both novices and experienced nonexperts in three areas, namely:

a) knowledge differences which include
declarative (knowing about things or
knowing that), and conditional or
strategic knowledge (knowing when,
where, why, if-then rules);
b) strategy differences (plans for solving
problems and achieving goals) and the
ability to monitor implementation and
adjust accordingly;
c) motivational differences that contribute
to commitment and persistence.
We can now turn to how these concepts
apply to expert psychotherapists.
In your list of features that characterize
the best therapist in your town, you might
have included that the expert therapist
should achieve favorable outcomes. In the
same way that you may wish to know the
results of a surgeon you choose, hopefully
one with a good track record, you would
expect the expert therapist to also have a
deservedly favorable reputation for the
positive outcomes he or she helped to
nurture.
The literature on psychotherapy provides
some guidance on what we should look for
in the expert therapists repertoire. First, and
foremost, if you wish to become an expert
therapist who achieves favorable treatment
outcomes on a regular basis, then the most
important skill you need in your therapeutic
repertoire is the ability to choose your
patients carefully. If you wish a rich and
rewarding career as a therapist with
favorable treatment outcomes, then the most
important skill is the ability to select your
patients carefully(same thing twice?). You
want to delimit your practice to the
proverbial YAVIS patient (young, attractive,
verbal, intelligent and successful) who has a
circumscribed nonpsychotic Axis I Disorder
with no comorbid problems and no history
of victimization. It would help if the patient
also has good coping skills and nurturing

50

International Journal of Existential

Psychology & Psychotherapy

social supports. In short, the literature

indicates that patient characteristics account
for most of the variance outcome. But for
many therapists, they do not have the option
or penchant to only work with YAVIS-like
patients. Then what are the other sources of
variance that contribute to treatment
outcomes? These include:
1) relationship factors;
2) therapist characteristics;
3) specific intervention procedures.
How do these features show up as you watch
your nominated expert therapist go about the
business of healing? The following core
tasks of psychotherapy are designed to
capture the complex processes of therapy.
Because of space limitations, these are
enumerated in point form. Elsewhere, I have
discussed in detail how to implement each
of these core tasks of psychotherapy
(Meichenbaum, 1994, 2002).
Core Tasks of Psychotherapy
1) Develop a therapeutic alliance that is
nonjudgmental, empathic and supportive
(The therapy relationship makes
substantial and consistent contributions
to psychotherapy outcome independent
of the specific type of treatment,
Norcoss, 2001; Ahn & Wampold, 2001;
Wampold, 2001).
2) Educate patients about the nature of their
presenting problems (e.g., symptom
features and course of their disorder,
relapse
symptoms,
etc.).
This
educational process is not a didactic
lecture, but arises from a Socratic
dialogue and from various discovery
procedures such as patient selfmonitoring,
feedback,
and
a
collaborative case conceptualization that
is individually tailored to the patient.
3) Nurture the patients hope by engaging
in collaborative goal-setting and by
ascertaining both past and present

www.existentialpsychology.org

Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2004

examples of strengths and resilience.

Adopt a strengths-based perspective.
4) Help patients develop and implement a
flexible coping repertoire, bolstering
intra- and interpersonal coping skills.
Build in generalization procedures. Do
not train and hope for transfer. Follow
specific
generalization
training
guidelines (See Meichenbaum, 2002).
5) Ensure that patients take credit and make
self-attributions concerning the changes
that they have brought about. Ensure that
patients view the data that results from
performing in vivo personal experiments
as evidence that unfreezes their beliefs
about themselves, the world, and the
future.
6) Address issues of relapse prevention
(i.e., warning signs, high-risk situations
like anniversary events, coping with
lapses).
7) Employ a flexible repertoire in
customizing both relationship stances
and specific intervention methods to the
individual patient and condition.
In approximately the one-half of clinical
cases where there is a documented history of
victimization, the expert therapist also needs
to:
8) Ensure patients safety and address the
clinical sequelae of trauma exposure and
comorbid problems.
9) Help patients do memory work of
trauma resolution and reintegration. The
focus is not on merely retelling the
details of the traumatic event, but instead
examining what patients did to survive
(focus on the rest of the story), and
also focus on the conclusions and
implications they draw as a result of
having experienced the trauma. As
described below, help patients engage in
activities that assist them in constructing
new more adaptive stories.
10) Help patients find and construct meaning
(salvaging something positive from the

51

International Journal of Existential

Psychology & Psychotherapy

trauma) that gives a sense of purpose,

mastery, control and acceptance. Use
patients already existing belief systems
(e.g., religion, communal rituals).
11) Ensure that the patients reconnect with
others who encourage them to adopt
active roles in multiple domains. (Not
delimit special contacts to only other
victims.)
12) Ensure that victimized patients develop
skills and a sense of efficacy on learning
ways to avoid revictimization.
A Search for Change Mechanisms
The expert therapist is also curious in
searching for the nature of the mediators and
moderators that contribute to change. How
do the implementation of these core tasks of
psychotherapy foster and nurture change? A
constructive narrative perspective provides
an heuristically valuable framework to
answer this question. A beginning point is
the recognition that people are story-tellers.
They offer accounts that are designed to
make sense of their world and their place in
it. They construct narratives that include
descriptions of events and of their and
others reactions to those events.
As Howard (1999, p. 190) observed,
We are lived by the stories we tell. Beware
of the stories you tell yourself, for you will
surely be lived by them.
The observation that people tell stories,
or actively construct personal realities, is not
new. From the philosophical musings of
Immanuel Kant to those of Jean-Paul Satre,
from the psychological writings of Wilhelm
Wundt to those of George Kelley, there is a
long tradition of the importance of storytelling or the creation of personal meaning.
Common to this tradition is the view that
individuals do not merely respond to events,
but that they respond to their interpretations
of events.
Perhaps it is possible that the core tasks
of psychotherapy operate by changing the

www.existentialpsychology.org

Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2004

nature of the stories or narratives that

individuals offer themselves and others. The
change in the stories that individuals offer
may represent a final common pathway of
behavioural change.
As an example, consider the stories
individuals who have been victimized might
offer
themselves
and
others.
Epidemiological studies indicate that while
three-quarters of individuals will experience
traumatic events during the course of their
lives, only approximately 10% to 25% will
evidence a lifetime instance of PTSD. While
the nature of the traumatic stimulus, the
response to victimization, vulnerability, and
recovery factors have each been implicated
in influencing the post-trauma adjustment
process, the present focus is on whether
these variables are mediated through the
narratives that individuals offer themselves
and others.
Meichenbaum and Fitzpatrick (1993)
and Meichenbaum and Fong (1993)
compared the nature of the narratives of
those individuals who continued to have
difficulties following experiencing a
traumatic event versus those who were able
to continue functioning, in spite of the
trauma exposure. Those individuals with
lingering distress tend to:
1) evidence more intrusive ideation and are
less likely to resolve their stories and
integrate their traumas;
2) dwell on injuries and death and continue
to search for an explanation and fail to
find satisfactory resolution (i.e., they
continually try to answer why
questions for which there are no
acceptable answers);
3) engage in undoing activities or what
has been called contrafactual thinking
(what if or only-if thinking);
4) continually make comparisons between
life as it is, compared to what it might
have been or what it was;

52

International Journal of Existential

Psychology & Psychotherapy

5) see themselves or others as blameworthy

and get caught up with preoccupying
thoughts of revenge;
6) see themselves as victims and as being
at risk with little expectations or hope
that things will improve or change.
Moreover, mere words or descriptive
accounts of the traumatic event often feel
inadequate to describe the horror of what
they have experienced and the perceived
negative implications for the future. In order
to capture and convey the emotional pain,
the traumatized individual becomes a poet
(of sorts) and uses metaphorical descriptions
such as:
I am a prisoner of the past.
I am soiled goods.
I am on sentry-duty all of the time.
I stuff my feelings.
See Meichenbaum (1994) for a collation
of the variety of metaphors that patients
offer
to
describe
their
PTSD
symptomatology of hypersensitivity, psychic
numbing, intrusive ideation, sense of
personal loss, and the implications for their
life.
Consider the impact of individuals
telling others and themselves that they are
prisoners of the past, or that they are
soiled goods. The use of such
metaphorical
descriptors,
either
by
individuals, families, communities, or even
nations, can readily influence how they
appraise events, the world and their future.
As Janoff-Bulman (1992) and McCann and
Pearlman (1991) highlight, traumatic events,
such as those of September 11, 2001 can
affect an individuals (as well as a nations)
core beliefs concerning safety and trust and
the resultant stories they tell. These stories,
in turn, can influence the adjustment
process, which, in turn, can confirm ones
beliefs that strengthens the story-line, and
thus, the process continues.
What can be done to break this cycle?
What naturally occurring socially supportive

www.existentialpsychology.org

Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2004

activities (religious or communal); what

therapeutic procedures can help traumatized
individuals alter their stories so they come to
find benefits, co-construct meaning and
marshal their strengths? That these are
important tasks is underscored by calls in
the treatment literature for traumatized
individuals to:
Assimilate their traumatic experiences
(Janet)
Fabricate a new meaning (McCann &
Pearlman)
Develop a healing theory (Figley)
Re-story their lives (Epston & White)
Restructure and conclude the trauma
story (Herman)
Come to terms with or resolve their hurt
(Thompson)
Rebuild shattered assumptions (JanoffBulman)
Develop a new mental schema and seek
completion (Horowitz)
Acknowledge and work through
memories (Courtois)
Reconstruct the self and provide new
perspectives about the past (Harvey)
Develop their own voice and not repeat
the
voice
of
the
perpetrator
(Meichenbaum)
Whatever the particular coin of phrase,
each of these authors are calling for
victimized patients to tell their stories
differently. Patients often enter treatment
with an account that reflects a sense of
victimization, demoralization, helplessness
and hopelessness. They feel victimized by
their circumstances, by their feelings and
thoughts, and by the absence of support
from others. This is especially true if they
have a prior history of victimization. (Note
that 35% of female victims have such a prior
history of repeated victimization.)
Research indicates that therapy can help
individuals both alter their narratives by
distinguishing
threatening
and
nonthreatening features of trauma and lead
53

International Journal of Existential

Psychology & Psychotherapy

to fewer disorganized thoughts (see Foa et

al., 1995; van Minnen et al., 2002). As
Harvey and Bryant (1999) and Pennebaker
(1993) and Pennebaker and Francis (1996)
highlight, engaging in more coherent,
insightful causal thinking can lead to more
positive outcomes and improved health
changes.
The various core psychotherapeutic tasks
are designed to foster these narrative and
behavioral changes as patients alter their
accounts from one in which they view
themselves as being victims to becoming
survivors, if not people who can even
thrive. For example, in one case the
patient initially viewed herself as a
stubborn victim and over the course of
treatment she began to view herself as a
tenacious survivor based on her past
history of coping efforts and the variety of
personal experiments she was able to
perform successfully. In another case a
patient was able to transform her emotional
pain that she felt at the death of her daughter
into a gift that she was able to share with
others (see Meichenbaum, 2001). The
Melissa Institute for Prevention of Violence
and Treatment of Victims that I direct, grew
out of the tragic murder of Melissa. Her
parents, relatives and friends, came together
to transform their pain into hopefully some
good that would come from this tragic loss.
If they could help prevent one more such
death, then perhaps Melissa did not die in
vain. As Viktor Frankl observed (as cited by
Mahoney, 1997, p. 32):
The meaning is always there, like barns
full of valuable experiences. It may be
the deeds we have done, or the things we
have learned, the love we have had for
someone else, or the suffering we have
overcome with courage and resolution.
Each of these brings meaning to life.
Indeed, to bear a terrible fate with
dignity is something extraordinary. To

www.existentialpsychology.org

Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2004

master your fate and use your suffering

to help others is for me the height of all
meaning.
Such gifts to others are the basis for new
stories. Expert therapists help individuals
engage in meaning-finding activities that
transform pain and bolster coping. How
expert therapists go about implementing the
core tasks of psychotherapy to achieve these
objectives of resilience is a story yet to be
fully told.
References
Ahn, H., Wampold, B. E. (2001). Where oh
where are the specific ingredients? A
meta-analyses of component studies in
counseling and psychotherapy. Journal
of Counseling Psychology, 48, 251-257.
Foa, E. B., Molnar, C., & Cashman, L.
(1995). Change in rape narratives
during exposure therapy for
posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of
Traumatic Stress, 8, 675-690.
Harvey, A. G., & Bryant, R. A. (1999). A
qualitative investigation of the
organization of traumatic memories.
British Journal of Clinical Psychology,
38, 401-405.
Howard, G. S. (1991). Cultural tales: A
narrative approach to thinking, crosscultural psychology and psychotherapy.
American Psychologist, 46, 187-197.
Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered
assumption: Toward a new psychology
of trauma. New York: Free Press.
Mahoney, M. (1997). Viktor E. Frankl, 1905
- 1997. Constructivism in the Human
Sciences, 2, 31-32.
McCann, L., & Pearlman, L. A. (1991).
Through a glass darkly: Understanding
and treating the adult survivor through
constructivist self-development theory.
New York: Brunner/Mazel.

54

International Journal of Existential

Psychology & Psychotherapy

Meichenbaum D. (1994). Treating adults

with post-traumatic stress disorder: A
clinical handbook. Waterloo, Ontario:
Institute Press.
Meichenbaum D. (2002). Treating
individuals with anger control problems
and aggressive behavior: A clinical
handbook. Waterloo, Ontario: Institute
Press.
Meichenbaum, D. (2001). Cognitivebehavioral treatment of posttraumatic
stress disorder from a narrative
constructivist perspective: A
conversation with Donald
Meichenbaum. In M. F. Hoyt (Ed.),
Interview with brief therapy experts.
Philadelphia, PA: Brunner Rutledge.
Meichenbaum, D., & Biemiller, A. K.
(1998). Nurturing independent
learners: Helping students take charge
of their learning. Cambridge, MA:
Brookline Books.
Meichenbaum, D., & Fitzpatrick, D. (1993).
A constructivist narrative perspective
on stress and coping: Stress inoculation
applications. In L. Goldberger anbd S.
Brezntz (Eds.), Handbook of stress:
Theoretical and clinical aspects. New
York: Free Press.
Meichenbaum, D., & Fong, G. (1993). How
individuals control their own minds: A
constructive narrative perspective. In D.
M. Wegner and J. W. Pennebaker
(Eds.), Handbook of mind control. New
York: Prentice Hall.
Norcross, J. C. (2001). Purposes, processes
and products of the task force on
empirically supported therapy
relationships. Psychotherapy, 38, 315356.
Pennebaker, J. W. (1993). Putting stress into
words: Health, linguistic and
therapeutic implications. Behavior
Research and Therapy, 31, 539-548.

www.existentialpsychology.org

Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2004

Pennebaker, J. W., & Francis, M. E. (1996).

Cognitive, emotional and language
process in disclosure. Cognition and
Emotion, 10, 601-626.
van Minnen, A., Wessel, I., Dijkstra, T., &
Roelofs, K. (2002). Changes in PTSD
patients narrative during prolonged
exposure therapy: A replication and
extension. Journal of Traumatic Stress,
15, 255-258.
Wampold, B. E. (2001). The great
psychotherapy debate: Models, methods
and findings. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

55