Emotion-Focused Therapy in Practice

In Emotion-Focused Therapy in Practice, Jeanne C. Watson demonstrates her approach to psychotherapy, which helps to facilitate change in clients' psychological, emotional, and interpersonal functioning.

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT), the process-experiential approach, is rooted in experiential psychotherapy and emphasizes the role of "experiencing" in the change process. The primary goals of this approach are to promote more effective emotional processing and affect regulation, as well as enhanced differentiation of self and other to increase autonomy and self-care in relationships, and to engender more positive treatment of self.

In EFT, the therapeutic relationship is seen as central to the change process — not only as a facilitator of the development of a positive working alliance, but also as an active ingredient of change.

This program features Dr. Watson's work with a young woman who has experienced abandonment and trauma. Dr. Watson demonstrates maximal responsiveness to the client — establishing empathy, acceptance, genuineness, and prizing — to help the client feel safe and to begin to explore her emotional experience and conceptualize her grief.

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT), the process-experiential approach, is rooted in experiential psychotherapy and emphasizes the role of "experiencing" in the change process. The primary goals of this approach are to promote more effective emotional processing and affect regulation, as well as enhanced differentiation of self and other to increase autonomy and self-care in relationships, and to engender more positive treatment of self. In EFT, the therapeutic relationship is seen as central to the change process — not only as a facilitator of the development of a positive working alliance, but also as an active ingredient of change.

EFT psychotherapists work to provide a client-centered relationship characterized by empathy, warm, and caring. Therapist empathy and acceptance work together to help clients develop positive introjects so that they can come to value, respect, and attend to their inner experience as an important source of information and in turn come to respect and understand the experience of others.

Empathic attunement is essential to facilitating more effective regulation and emotional processing especially by attending to the more poignant, vulnerable aspects of client' experiences. Attentive to how clients treat themselves, EFT therapists share these observations with them in order to help clients develop more positive behaviors toward themselves and their experience.

Drawing from client-centered and gestalt approaches as well as years of process research, emotion-focused psychotherapy has identified and modeled specific therapeutic interventions and how clients resolve specific cognitive-affective and interpersonal problems in psychotherapy. The resulting performance models have been subjected to empirical investigation and provide guidance to clinicians for how to work with clients in psychotherapy.

Examples of these performance models include systematic evocative unfolding to resolve puzzling reactions; empty-chair work to resolve negative feelings about significant others and promote differentiation and autonomy in relationships; two-chair work to resolve conflict splits and negative treatment of self; focusing to clarify an unclear felt sense; clearing a space to help clients self-soothe and modulate distress; and empathy at vulnerability markers to help clients process painful emotional experiences.

Using these methods, emotion-focused psychotherapy helps to facilitate change in clients' psychological, emotional, and interpersonal functioning.

Jeanne C. Watson, PhD, CPsych, is a professor in the Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto in Canada. A major exponent of humanistic–experiential approaches, she has contributed to the development of emotion-focused psychotherapy, the process-experiential approach.

Dr. Watson is a research–clinician who researches psychotherapy process and outcome in emotion-focused psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral psychotherapy in the treatment of depression. In 2002, she received the Outstanding Early Achievement Award from the International Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR), and was recently appointed General Vice-President of SPR in October 2012.

Dr. Watson has coauthored and edited seven books on psychotherapy, including Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy: The Process-Experiential Approach to Change (2003); Expressing Emotion: Myths, Realities and Therapeutic Strategies (1999); Process-Experiential Psychotherapy in the Treatment of Depression (2005); and Case Studies in Emotion-Focused Treatment of Depression: A Comparison of Good and Poor Outcome (2007); as well as 60 articles and chapters.

Dr. Watson does training in emotion-focused psychotherapy in Europe and North America and maintains a part-time practice in Toronto.

• Elliott, R., Watson, J. C., Greenberg, L., & Goldman, R. (2004). Learning emotion-focused psychotherapy: The process-experiential approach to change. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• Gendling, E. T. (1996). Focusing-oriented psychotherapy: A manual of the experimental method. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
• Greenberg, L. S., Rice, L., & Elliott, R. (1993). Facilitating emotional change: The moment-by-moment process. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
• Greenberg, L. S., & Watson, J. C. (2005). Emotion-focused therapy for depression. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. (This book has been translated and republished in Complex Chinese language by permission of APA in 2009.)
• Rogers, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships, as developed in the client-centered framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A study of science: Formulations of the personal and the social context (pp. 184–256). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
• Watson, J. C., Goldman, R. N., & Greenberg, L. S. (2007). Case studies in emotion-focused treatment of depression: A comparison of good and poor outcome Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• Watson, J. C. (2011). The process of growth and transformation: Extending the process model. Person Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy, 10(1), 11–27.

APA Videos

• Case Formulation in Emotion-Focused Therapy: Addressing Unfinished Business
  Rhonda N. Goldman
• Emotion-Focused Therapy for Depression
  Leslie S. Greenberg
• Emotion-Focused Therapy for Trauma
  Sandra C. Paivio
• Process-Experiential Psychotherapy: An Emotion-Focused Approach
  Leslie S. Greenberg
• Three Approaches to Psychotherapy With a Female Client: The Next Generation
  Judith S. Beck, Leslie S. Greenberg, and Nancy McWilliams
• Three Approaches to Psychotherapy With a Male Client: The Next Generation
  Judith S. Beck, Leslie S. Greenberg, and Nancy McWilliams

APA Books

• Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy: The Dynamics of Emotion, Love, and Power
  Leslie S. Greenberg and Rhonda N. Goldman
• Emotion-Focused Therapy
  Leslie S. Greenberg
• Emotion-Focused Therapy for Depression
  Leslie S. Greenberg and Jeanne C. Watson
• Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy: The Process-Experiential Approach to Change
  Robert Elliott, Jeanne C. Watson, Rhonda N. Goldman, and Leslie S. Greenberg