How to find FRAMES

FRAMES (Fundamental Repetitive and Maladaptive Emotion Structures) are a powerful way to display the recurrent plots of the stories that patients in psychotherapy tell about themselves and their lives. Here we offer a systematic, rule-governed, five-step method for finding and representing FRAMES. Step 1 offers several criteria for selecting therapy sessions in which to identify FRAMES. Step 2 involves classifying all of the emotions expressed in a session using Dahl's (1978) theory and classification scheme (Dahl & Stengel, 1978) of emotions. In step 3 we construct an Object Map in which each column represents an object that the patient talks about and each cell locates that talk in the text. These entries are a rough guide for finding stories that contain FRAMES. Step 4 describes the procedure for identifying the narrative structure, i.e., plot, of a story. And finally step 5 shows how to construct a FRAME and look for repetitions in other text.