@ARTICLE{10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01244, AUTHOR={Braga, Cátia and Ribeiro, António P. and Sousa, Inês and Gonçalves, Miguel M.}, TITLE={Ambivalence Predicts Symptomatology in Cognitive-Behavioral and Narrative Therapies: An Exploratory Study}, JOURNAL={Frontiers in Psychology}, VOLUME={10}, YEAR={2019}, URL={https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01244}, DOI={10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01244}, ISSN={1664-1078}, ABSTRACT={Background: The identification of poor outcome predictors is essential if we are to prevent therapeutic failure. Ambivalence – defined as a conflictual relationship between two positions of the self: one favoring change and another one favoring problematic stability – has been consistently associated with poor outcomes. However, the precise relationship between ambivalence and clients’ symptomatology remains unclear.Objective: This study aims at assessing ambivalence’s power to predict symptomatology, using a longitudinal design.Methods: The complete 305 sessions of 16 narrative and cognitive-behavioral cases have been analyzed with the Ambivalence Coding System and outcome measures have been used for each session.Results: Ambivalence emerged as a significant predictor of subsequent symptomatology suggesting that ambivalence is not only related to treatment outcomes, but that it represents a strong predictor of subsequent symptomatology.Discussion: The implications of ambivalence’s power to predict outcomes for research and clinical practice are discussed.} }