Counselling and reflexive processes: role of multimodal narrative devices in promoting reflection and reflexivity within university context

This chapter discusses the relation between reflexive processes and multimodal narrative devices in an innovative model of counselling interventions developed and implemented among underachieving college students. We present a semiotic and psychodynamic conceptualization of reflexive processes based on a conception of emotions as regulators of sense-making and discuss two reflexive processes—reflection and reflexivity. Reflection is a psychological process that allows a subject to give a new meaning to an individual’s way of being, whereas reflexivity consists in giving a new meaning to a process. It denotes recognizing the active role assumed in orienting one’s own experience. This conceptualization of reflexive process has oriented the development of a counselling approach among underachieving college students. Furthermore, it aims at promoting reflection and reflexivity to influence students’ academic performance. The counselling is based on a novel narrative multimodal methodology, the Narrative Mediation Path (NMP), which comprises seven weekly group sessions. It is based on the narrative group and four narrative modes (metaphoric, iconographic, writing, and bodily), which are conveyed using narrative mediums (proverbs and mottos, vignettes, low, high and decisional turning points, and sculpture). The NMP approach is exemplified through the presentation of narrative excerpts taken from the transcripts of groups of underachieving students who participated in the counselling sessions. The implications of the NMP are discussed with regard to the need for developing novel counselling approaches based on narrative multimodal methods that promote reflection and reflexivity in university settings.