Common factors viewed through the lens of the active inference framework: A mapping review.

Recently, the active inference framework (AIF) has been suggested as a unified theoretical framework for psychopathology and psychotherapy integration. In this line of reasoning, psychopathology and less severe psychological problems stem from clients’ suboptimized generative model. Hence, the goal of psychotherapy is to help change clients’ generative model to better account for their current life circumstances. The aim of this mapping review was to summarize existing explanations and conceptualization of psychotherapy common factors from the AIF perspective. Searching the PsycArticles, PsycInfo, and MEDLINE databases, 22 eligible studies were identified. Using the taxonomy of common factors by Tschacher et al. (2014), AIF conceptualizations were found for therapeutic alliance, mindfulness, mentalization, cognitive restructuring, a new narrative about self, insight, desensitization, corrective emotional experience, and client feedback. Generally, changes in clients’ generative models can be achieved via two general strategies: (i) promotion of prediction errors by expectation violation, resulting in changes in priors (e.g., desensitization and corrective emotional experience); and (ii) decreasing the overall precision of prior beliefs and increasing the precision of bottom-up signals (e.g., mindfulness). Furthermore, the authors proposed AIF conceptualization for selected common factors that were not discussed. Finally, the authors linked the application of the AIF to other models of psychotherapy processes as a complex system (e.g., synergetics) and proposed directions for future research.