ABSTRACT
In the course of every psychotherapy session, a patient will unconsciously—and at times, consciously—work over and adapt to the therapist’s prevailing frame-related interventions. Therapeutic work with the framework of a psychotherapy is grounded in an understanding of the encoded derivative messages that framing interventions—interpretive and management—evoke in patients. Frame impingements, whether frame-securing or frame-modifying, are extremely common in psychotherapy and counselling—and patients are continually adapting to framing activities. Therapists need to develop a strong sensitivity to the ground rules of psychotherapy and to the many ways in which the rules can be secured or modified. Encoded themes—disguised, derivative images—related to the status of frames and framing activities almost always emerge through patients’ narratives. The human mind denies and represses entire anxiety-provoking and depressing events, as well as many of the most disturbing meanings of remembered traumatic events.
