Relation between referential and reflexive processes: an explorative study

Referential process (RP) has been investigated in the psychotherapy domain to understand the mechanisms underlying clients’ problems and identify the process of change. RP shares some theoretical assumptions with another relevant construct in the psychotherapy domain, i.e. the reflexive process. However, the relation between RP and reflexive process has never been explored through an operational approach. This study aims at analyzing the relation between referential activity (RA), conceived as the linguistic index of RP, and two reflexive processes of different complexity, reflection and reflexivity, in a group counseling program. Audio recordings from seven group counseling sessions were analyzed through two procedures: (1) the latest Italian version of the computerized text analysis software developed for analyzing RA, and (2) the analysis of the narrative functions of reflection and reflexivity. Accordingly, reflection processes were mainly identified in the narrative excerpts by adopting the conventional procedure for RA software-based analysis and combining it with the analysis of the narrative functions. More complex processes of reflexivity were detected when the analysis of the narrative functions was combined with an innovative procedure for RA software-based analysis. Overall, these data indicated that a high level of RA is essential for activating reflexive processes of higher complexity.