Integrative · 2022
Deep Experiential Therapy in an emotional key
Deep change occurs when emotion reveals a dishonoured relational need and the relationship makes it possible to honour it once again.
Deep Experiential Therapy in an emotional key is an integrative proposal developed by Esteban Laso Ortiz and Alfredo Canevaro which brings together the systemic tradition, experiential emotional work, the theory of relational needs and intervention with individuals, couples and families. Its central clinical thesis holds that many symptoms, blocks and relational conflicts are maintained because basic human needs to be loved, recognised, respected or legitimised were dishonoured within significant bonds, generating painful primary emotions that the person organises through defences, secondary emotions, rigid relational patterns and justifying narratives. The intervention seeks to move beyond rational debate, abstract explanation and communicational repetition in order to create intense, regulated and clinically directed emotional encounters in which the patient can make contact with the primary emotion, recognise the violated need, receive or imagine a meaningful response from the other, take up a new stance towards themselves and reorganise their relational position. In this sense, the model retains the systemic view of bonds, triangles, loyalties, cycles and contexts, but shifts the centre of gravity towards living emotional experience, analogic language, bodily resonance, therapeutic ritual and the repair of deep relational needs.
Theory of change
A person changes when a primary emotion linked to a dishonoured relational need can be lived, recognised and repaired within a significant relational experience.
Core ideas
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Therapeutic depth depends on touching emotion and need
Deep Experiential Therapy holds that an intervention becomes deep when it reaches the primary emotion and the relational need that organises the suffering, not when it accumulates explanations about the problem. The technique must lead to a point at which the person can feel what they needed, what was left dishonoured and what relational experience might repair it. Reference: Laso Ortiz, E. and Canevaro, A. (2022), Terapia experiencial profunda.
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Relational needs are the core of emotion
Emotion signals the state of a relational need: to be loved, respected, recognised, protected or legitimised. When the need is honoured, the emotion can be integrated; when it is dishonoured, the person develops defences, symptoms or repeated patterns in order to protect themselves from shame, abandonment or unworthiness. Reference: Laso Ortiz, E. (2022), Honrar las necesidades.
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The symptom can express an unrecognised relational need
The symptom is not reducible to an individual dysfunction, but can function as protection, protest, substitute or signal of a need that found no recognition in significant relationships. The intervention therefore asks not only how to eliminate the symptom, but what need it is trying to preserve and what bond must be reorganised for it to become unnecessary. Reference: Laso Ortiz, E. (2014), El trabajo con emociones en terapia familiar; Laso Ortiz, E. and Canevaro, A. (2022), Terapia experiencial profunda.
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Change requires emotional experience, not conversation alone
Therapeutic conversation can clarify, order and prepare, but deep change appears when the patient lives through a different affective experience in the presence of a significant other or of the therapist. Looking, giving thanks, asking, saying goodbye, holding a silence or receiving a reparative response can reorganise more than many correct explanations. Reference: Laso Ortiz, E. and Canevaro, A. (2022), Terapia experiencial profunda.
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Secondary emotion protects a primary vulnerability
Anger, contempt, coldness, accusation or over-explaining can function as defences against sadness, shame, fear or the need for recognition. The therapist does not fight the secondary emotion, but reads it as a way in towards the primary emotion and the need the person cannot yet show directly. Reference: Laso Ortiz, E. (2015), Cinco axiomas de la emoción humana; Laso Ortiz, E. (2018), El amor en clave emocional.
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The therapeutic relationship is both vehicle and catalyst of change
The therapist's alliance, presence and resonance allow the emotion to be activated without destroying safety. The therapeutic relationship does not replace the patient's significant relationships, but can function as a space where the dishonoured need receives a first form of legitimation and where new relational positions are rehearsed. Reference: Laso Ortiz, E. (2018), El amor en clave emocional; Laso Ortiz, E. and Canevaro, A. (2022), Terapia experiencial profunda.
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Analogic language organises the relationship before discourse does
Posture, gaze, tone, distance, gesture and silence convey decisive emotional information about the relationship. Intervening in analogic language makes it possible to modify the scene in which the symptom is sustained and to open up experiences that words alone cannot reach. Reference: Laso Ortiz, E. (2015), Cinco axiomas de la emoción humana.
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Rituals turn emotion into transformative memory
A well-designed therapeutic ritual is not an ornamental symbolic representation, but an emotional action that explores an experience, transforms or holds an emotion and creates a memory. That memory can function as a biographical and relational turning point when it is bound to a need that has been honoured. Reference: Laso Ortiz, E. (2016), Los rituales terapéuticos familiares en clave emocional, 2.
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In a couple, connecting with the other requires first making contact with oneself
Couple therapy in an emotional key shifts the focus from arguing better to feeling better what each person needs and fears. The relationship changes when each member can speak from their own primary emotion, recognise the need they are trying to collect from the other and receive a response that does not feed the circuit of reproach, shame or contempt. Reference: Laso Ortiz, E. (2018), El amor en clave emocional.
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Differentiation requires freeing the patient from impossible relational functions
Many symptoms are maintained because the person occupies an impossible position within the system: mediating between parents, propping up a relationship, compensating for a loss, paying a family debt or preventing a separation. Deep intervention helps return those burdens to those they belong to and allows the patient to recover a more differentiated and vital position. Reference: Laso Ortiz, E. and Canevaro, A. (2022), Terapia experiencial profunda.
Influences
- Systemic family therapy
- Structural family therapy
- Experiential family therapy
- Carl Whitaker
- Murray Bowen
- Virginia Satir
- Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy
- Salvador Minuchin
- George A. Kelly
- Ronald D. Laing
- Leslie S. Greenberg
- Michael J. Mahoney
- Milton H. Erickson
- Juan Luis Linares
- Humberto Maturana
- Attachment theory
- The psychology of emotions
- Social constructionism
Key references
- Laso Ortiz, E. (2014). El trabajo con emociones en terapia familiar: teoría y aplicaciones. En R. Medina, E. Laso y E. Hernández (eds.), Pensamiento sistémico: nuevas perspectivas y contextos de aplicación. Guadalajara: Litteris.
- Laso Ortiz, E. (2015). Terapia familiar en clave emocional, 1: breve revisión histórica. Revista Electrónica de Psicología Iztacala, 18(2), 631-662.
- Laso Ortiz, E. (2015). Terapia familiar en clave emocional, 2: una propuesta integradora. Revista Electrónica de Psicología Iztacala, 18(3).
- Laso Ortiz, E. (2015). Cinco axiomas de la emoción humana: una clave emocional para la terapia familiar. Revista de Psicoterapia, 26(100), 143-158.
- Laso Ortiz, E. (2016). Los rituales terapéuticos familiares en clave emocional, 2: pasos para construir y ejecutar un ritual. Revista REDES, 33, 9-26.
- Laso Ortiz, E. (2018). El amor en clave emocional: enamoramiento, desconfirmación y terapia de pareja. REDES. Revista de Psicoterapia Relacional e Intervenciones Sociales, 37, 11-36.
- Laso Ortiz, E. (2022). Honrar las necesidades: un principio integrador para una terapia en clave emocional. En Emociones y psicoterapia: caminos e intersecciones, 107-144.
- Laso Ortiz, E. y Canevaro, A. (2022). Terapia experiencial profunda: el trabajo en clave emocional con parejas e individuos. Madrid: Ediciones Morata.