Laura Rice
Pioneered the study of how change happens in therapy.
Co-developer of emotion-focused therapy who applied moment-by-moment process research to map how emotional change unfolds in session.
terms
techniques
Who they were
Born in Massachusetts, Laura Rice earned her PhD at the University of Chicago in 1955 and was a former colleague of Carl Rogers. She taught at York University from 1968. In the 1970s and 1980s she applied task analysis to therapy transcripts to map the process of client change, co-creating EFT with Leslie Greenberg, with whom she co-authored Patterns of Change.
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their techniques
How the work was done
Their big idea
Emotion-Focused Theory
Emotions are adaptive signals; change comes from reaching, processing and transforming them.
The approach they founded
Emotion-Focused Therapy
Treats emotions as signals — helping you reach, understand, and transform them rather than override them.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Rice — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.