For psychiatrists working with patients who are not progressing.
A structured system for identifying and resolving the problematic emotions that maintain your patients' presentations.
Designed for psychiatric practice. Peer-reviewed. Integrates into your existing clinical model without disrupting it.
- Greater diagnostic clarity when patients remain stuck despite appropriate treatment
- A structured, evidence-based way to access and work directly with the underlying affect
- More precise clinical conversations around the emotions
- Addresses maintaining factors within existing session time — no documentation changes required
Your treatment plan is sound, so why are they not getting better?
This is not a failure of clinical skill. It is a gap in the available infrastructure for working with emotion with precision.
The diagnosis is accurate. The treatment plan is sound. The patient is attending. And still — nothing moves.
This is one of the most common — and least discussed — clinical experiences in psychiatric practice.
You may recognize:
- Patients who can describe their thoughts clearly, but return to each session emotionally unchanged
- Presentations where symptoms persist — not because the diagnosis is wrong, but because something beneath it has not been addressed
- Patients who circle through the same narrative without shifting the underlying affect
- Patients who are stable, compliant, and still not getting better
Most clinical training focuses on identifying symptoms, making diagnoses, and prescribing appropriately. What is rarely addressed is the step that comes after: resolving the emotions that keep the patient stuck.
Emotioncubes: a structured system for working directly with emotions that drive symptoms
Emotioncubes are a peer-reviewed clinical system of 12 beautifully finished, solid wood cubes, each corresponding to a different human emotion. The Emotioncubes use the Six Dimensions of Emotion framework and the collection includes cubes representing Anger, Disgust, Envy, Fear, Guilt, Interest, Jealousy, Love, Pride, Sadness, Shame, and a Discussioncube for broader emotional exploration.
When a patient selects the cube that reflects their emotion, you guide them through the Six Dimensions of Words, Events, Thoughts, Urges, Body Sensations, and Choices.
As they work through the six faces with you, something specific happens. The emotion is no longer something they are struggling with, trapped inside, or burdened by, it is something they are holding, examining, and moving through — with your clinical judgment and guidance.
The result is not identification. It is resolution.
The system:
Helps you directly address the emotions, maintaining the presentation
Provides a structured mechanism for identifying emotional patterns
Supports greater clarity for diagnosis and treatment progression
Produces movement within sessions — without overcomplicating the clinical encounter
- Supports and strengthens your treatment planning.
Emotioncubes are a precise clinical instrument that integrates into existing psychiatric treatment plans to provide access what has been hardest to reach.
How the system works in a session
1. The Cubes
Each of the 12 Emotion Cubes corresponds to a specific human emotion: Anger, Disgust, Envy, Fear, Guilt, Jealousy, Joy, Love, Pride, Sadness, and Shame.
A twelfth cube — the Discussion Cube — supports broader exploration of emotional experience across the patient’s life context.
Rather than identifying emotion alone, the system guides the patient through the full architecture of their experience — from recognition through to resolution.
The Emotioncubes serve as both a gentle prompt and a powerful container for the patient to externalize their emotions, examine them, and choose how to respond.
2. The Six Dimensions
The Six Dimensions of Emotions framework addresses the patient’s experience:
WORDS — To name the emotion words that fit how they feel
EVENTS — To describe what happened that led to the emotion
THOUGHTS — To recognize the thoughts that accompany the emotion
URGES — To identify the urges the emotion creates
BODY SENSATIONS — To locate where they feel it in their body
CHOICES — To choose how to respond to the emotion
3. In Session
The Emotioncubes are introduced when an emotional issue is mentioned:
“Some people find it easier to work through what they are feeling using something structured. Would you be open to trying it?”
The patient selects a relevant cube and works through each face with your guidance. The session remains clinically directed — the structure of the cube provides the scaffold, your guidance provides the direction.
Within existing session time, the system:
- Accesses the emotional state with precision
- Uses the Six Dimensions of Emotion framework
- Structures the exploration without losing clinical direction
- Identifies the mechanism maintaining the presentation
- Supports movement toward resolution
Where psychiatrists are using this system
Independent Private Practice
One-to-one clinical sessions with patients experiencing problems related to too much or too little emotion.
- Complex or emotionally difficult cases where the diagnosis is clear but progress has stalled
- Patients who understand their thoughts but remain emotionally unchanged from session to session
- Situations where verbal exploration has reached its limit and something deeper is needed
For the private practice psychiatrist:
Emotioncubes are the system that reaches the underlying emotion without adding complexity or session time.
Specialist Psychiatric Practice
For specialist psychiatric practices with an established patient base and a reputation for excellence.
- A clinically intelligent addition to individual and group work with high-complexity patients
- Structured emotional frameworks that reflect the rigor of your specialist practice
- An impressive clinical instrument for guiding the development of early career colleagues
For the specialist psychiatric setting:
Emotioncubes are the kind of clinically sophisticated system that is consistent with advanced practice.
Institutional and Training Settings
For psychiatric departments, training programs, and multi-clinician organizations.
- Standardizing structured emotional assessment across clinical teams
- Integration into residency training, early career, and clinical supervision frameworks
- Supporting clinical consistency across multiple sites and practitioners
For institutional settings:
The Emotioncubes system is designed with standardization in mind. Training architecture, clinical fidelity, and integration into existing supervision structures are all part of the institutional training program.
Integration into your existing psychiatric practice
Emotion Cubes is designed to integrate without disruption to your existing clinical structure.
- Complements existing treatment models — does not replace them
- Does not disrupt diagnostic frameworks or clinical formulation
- Does not extend session length
- Requires no change to documentation structure
- Can be introduced immediately into clinical work — no extended onboarding required
In practice, the system is introduced at a specific point in the session — the moment when a patient has been asked about their emotional experience and verbal approaches are not reaching what needs to be reached.
You introduce it. The patient engages with it. You guide the clinical direction.
The session continues. The structure of the cube does the scaffolding work so you can focus on what you do best.
It functions as a structured addition to what you already do — not a parallel system requiring parallel effort.
Peer-reviewed. Published. Here is the evidence.
The Methodology
The study combined cognitive pretesting methodology with in-depth qualitative clinical interviews — the correct approach for a system at this stage of development.
This methodology was selected because qualitative pretesting is the only approach by which acceptability, face validity, and utility can be established with confidence — before outcome claims are made prematurely.
Two groups of practicing counselors in England and Ireland participated — one reviewing the system on first impression, one using it therapeutically with real patients over two weeks.
What the Research Found
- Acceptability confirmed — high across all participants on first impression and after clinical use
- Face validity confirmed — the system does what it is designed to do
- Utility confirmed across CBT, DBT, EFT, and person-centred modalities
- Therapeutic alliance supported — structure was experienced as facilitative, not restrictive
After two weeks of use with real patients, one clinician reported:
“I must say I did not expect them to be as effective as they are. I cannot get over what has happened with some of my clients. They have really helped people make big shifts in a very short period of time.”
— Practicing counselor, Methods in Psychology study, 2023
Where the Research Is Now
The 2023 publication establishes acceptability, face validity, and utility. The next phase — extended clinical study in psychiatric settings — is the reason Emotion Cubes is coming to the APA Annual Meeting in San Francisco in May 2026.
The psychiatrists who engage with this system now are not adopters of a finished protocol. They are part of building the next stage of the evidence base.
That is a different — and more significant — kind of clinical contribution.
Evaluate the system in a clinical context
If you would like to see how Emotion Cubes integrates into real clinical work, you can request a short demonstration.
The demonstration walks through how the system is introduced, how it is applied within a session, and how it interacts with existing clinical frameworks.
It takes 30 minutes. It is available remotely now — and in person at the APA Annual Meeting in San Francisco, May 16–19, 2026.
A limited number of founding psychiatrist places are available — including priority delivery, locked pricing, and a private integration session with Brendan Murphy.