The following is a summary of “Journey within: mental navigation as a novel framework for understanding psychotherapeutic transformation,” published in the February 2024 issue of Psychiatry by Kabrel et al.
While psychotherapy has consistently shown its effectiveness, understanding the exact mechanisms behind the transformative process poses a persistent challenge that has yet to be fully unraveled.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to develop a framework for mental navigation to address the complexities of navigating the cognitive space encompassing thoughts, ideas, concepts, and memories, leveraging the metaphoric spatial language indicative of reflective experiences.
They conducted a comparative analysis of spatial language usage across three distinct types of text corpora: transcripts from psychotherapy sessions (≈ 12 M. words), casual everyday conversations (≈ 12 M. words), and fictional dialogues in movies(≈ 14 M. words). They examined 110 psychotherapy transcripts to identify and characterize patterns and dynamics related to mental navigation.
The result showed that there was a substantial increase in the use of spatial metaphors during psychotherapy sessions compared to casual everyday dialogues (U = 192.0, P=.001, d = 0.549) and fictional conversations (U = 211, P<.001, d = 0.792). When analyzing the utilization of non-spatial metaphors, no significant differences were observed among the three datasets (H = 0.682, P=0.710). The qualitative analysis provided specific instances illustrating the occurrence of mental navigation.
Investigators concluded that psychotherapy might work by helping people navigate their inner world, leading to lasting change.
Source: bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-024-05522-8