DAPP-III Code Key
Conflict/Synthesis
Conflict - the process of attending simultaneously to a thesis and its antithesis. Either one party or both parties in a therapeutic relationship can hold the conflict. Conflict is coded using brackets surrounding the letter “C.” It can include the utterance numbers, identifying the elements in conflict. For example, a conflict coding might look like this: 24 <C> 36
Synthesis - the resolution or transcending of the conflict through the emergence of a higher-order organization of activity and meaning-making. Synthesis is marked with the letter “S,” and can include in parentheses which previously conflicting utterances it is a synthesis of. For example: S(24, 36)
Resources Offered
Attentional Support (A) - primarily focused on maintaining or expanding the client’s awareness of actions, experiences and feelings, and does not entail explicit attempts by therapists to offer new meanings or create new experiences as do the processes of interpretation and enactment.
Examples of attentional support: Questions, restatements/reflections, encouragement to elaborate, offering feedback, providing reassurance/accurate empathy, holding emotions.
Interpretation (I) - the relational process by which the therapist draws upon her own meaning-making structures to offer novel perspectives or meaning making experiences.
Interpretations can be client-specific (e.g. when a therapist shares her perspective on why a client might behave in a certain way, or offer an alternative understanding of another person’s actions), or more general views of aspects of human nature (e.g. during psychoeducation on the nature of anxiety, or destigmatizing a client’s experience of depression).
Enactment (E) - refers to any processes within therapy in which novel experience or activity is evoked and then made a focus of exploration.
Examples of enactment: when a therapist offers a client directions, homework, role-playing opportunities, desensitizations/exposures, meta-communication (therapist explicitly draws attention to the relational dynamics occurring in the moment).
Level of Resource Usage
Conflict - the process of attending simultaneously to a thesis and its antithesis. Either one party or both parties in a therapeutic relationship can hold the conflict. Conflict is coded using brackets surrounding the letter “C.” It can include the utterance numbers, identifying the elements in conflict. For example, a conflict coding might look like this: 24 <C> 36
Synthesis - the resolution or transcending of the conflict through the emergence of a higher-order organization of activity and meaning-making. Synthesis is marked with the letter “S,” and can include in parentheses which previously conflicting utterances it is a synthesis of. For example: S(24, 36)
Resources Offered
Attentional Support (A) - primarily focused on maintaining or expanding the client’s awareness of actions, experiences and feelings, and does not entail explicit attempts by therapists to offer new meanings or create new experiences as do the processes of interpretation and enactment.
Examples of attentional support: Questions, restatements/reflections, encouragement to elaborate, offering feedback, providing reassurance/accurate empathy, holding emotions.
Interpretation (I) - the relational process by which the therapist draws upon her own meaning-making structures to offer novel perspectives or meaning making experiences.
Interpretations can be client-specific (e.g. when a therapist shares her perspective on why a client might behave in a certain way, or offer an alternative understanding of another person’s actions), or more general views of aspects of human nature (e.g. during psychoeducation on the nature of anxiety, or destigmatizing a client’s experience of depression).
Enactment (E) - refers to any processes within therapy in which novel experience or activity is evoked and then made a focus of exploration.
Examples of enactment: when a therapist offers a client directions, homework, role-playing opportunities, desensitizations/exposures, meta-communication (therapist explicitly draws attention to the relational dynamics occurring in the moment).
Level of Resource Usage
- Use (U) – e.g. a client answers a question, elaborates on a topic after a reflection or encouragement, agrees with an interpretation or incorporates an interpretation into her understanding, follows a therapist’s directions, or participates in a role play.
- Qualify (Q) – e.g. when a client accepts part of an interpretation but modifies or limits it in some way, or negotiates the terms of the novel action that the clinician suggests in the session or for homework.
- Consider (C) – e.g. when a client expresses doubt or uncertainty about a resource (e.g. a question, interpretation, or suggestion for activity), but does not reject it outright.
- Reject (R) – e.g. when a client declines to answer a question, denies the accuracy of an interpretation, or refuses to participate in a suggested activity.
- Avoid/ignore (Av or Ig) - similar to reject, except that in avoid/ignore, the client does not explicitly reject, but moves on as if the resource was not offered at all.
- Unknown (Un) - when it is unclear at what level the client is or is not able to use a resource.