Activating the corrective emotional experience.

Since the concept of the corrective emotional experience was first introduced, an impressive body of research has supported the contention that patient in-session processing of painful emotional conflicts within a safe and empathic relationship is necessary for therapeutic change. In this article, I summarize what we know about how emotions can be accessed, expressed, and processed within the therapeutic relationship to bring about a corrective emotional experience. I then provide clinical vignettes and data on three patients, all of whom displayed distinct patterns of arousal, experience, expression, and depth of processing that were differentially related to outcome in short-term emotion-focused therapy.