La narrazione autobiografica e il funzionamento del sè: l'analisi dei ricordi autobiografici nel processo diagnostico

In the last decades, both cognitive and personality researchers and different-oriented therapists and clinicians have converged on the powerful role that narrative memory plays, as anchoring aspect of personality and identity. Many studies have demonstrated that spontaneous self defining memories (Singer & Salovey, 1993; Blagov & Singer, 2004) evoked and provoked in clinical setting can provide valuable information for assessment about repetitive themes and recurrent patterns of feelings linked to ongoing goals or conflicts that are central to the individual. However, the work still leaves open the question of how human beings think in this manner and how personal memories, spontaneously evoked during the clinical interview, are useful for personality assessment and case conceptualization. The present study intended to pursue three goals. First, the aim was to introduce and to demonstrate reliability and validity of the Coding System for Autobiographical Memory Narratives in Psychotherapy (Singer & Bonalume, 2008) for identifying and coding autobiographical memory narratives in clinical interview. The study demonstrates good inter-rater reliability and the utility of the coding system. Consequentially, we aimed to investigate, first the relationship among autobiographical memories dimensions, as content, specificity, meaning making and emotional tone, and the relationship between these memories dimensions and patient’s self and personality functioning, evaluated with clusters of indexes, according to the Exner’s Comprehensive System for Rorschach (Exner, 2003).The autobiographical memories during semi-structured clinical interviews for bio-psycho-social data recollection and Rorschach responses of 30 patients were recollected. The Coding System for Autobiographical Memory Narratives in Psychotherapy (Singer & Bonalume, 2008), the Classification and Scoring System for Self-defining Autobiographical Memories (Singer e Blagov, 2001) and for Content (Thorne & McLean, 2001), the linguistic analysis by software CM (Mergenthaler, 1999) and Exner’s Comprehensive System for Rorschach (2003) were used. The results demonstrated that a strong negative association existed between specificity and integrative meaning; integrative memories were largely independent of event content affect, while specificity were related in a predictable manner with both negative emotional tone memories and narratives about life-threatening experiences and relationships. The generalized estimating equations confirmed that the overgeneral memories lean on affective disturbance, characterized by a ruminative thinking and an usual concerns about self-esteem and dysfunctional attitudes. Moreover, the ability to generate integrative meanings from narrative memories is not effected only by the subject’s affective regulation, but also by the cognitive behaviour, closely related to overgeneral and emotional memory. The ability to engage in autobiographical reasoning in order to construct a coherent and generative life story reveal degree of socioemotional maturity and level of adjustment. In addition, implications for future research and clinical practice using this model of analysis are discussed.