Bulletin of the Psychoanalytic Research Society, Volume II, Number 1, Spring, 1993
One not-so-obvious advantage of the Bulletin is that we can use our newsletter as a forum for psychoanalytically-oriented researchers to keep each other informed regarding ongoing (or recently-completed) research projects. If you or your students are engaged in empirical research assessing psychoanalytic constructs, please let us know. We'd like to include brief summaries of such projects in future issues of the Bulletin. In this issue, we are fortunate to be able to describe two ongoing doctoral dissertations that are being supervised by Dr. Carol Geisler at the New York University School of Social Work
Brian Quinn's doctoral dissertation examines Robert Lang's hypothesis that a therapist's interventions and management of the framework of treatment (i.e., how the therapist deals with issues such as session length and frequency, confidentiality, etc.) are crucial stimuli or "triggers" for a patient's free associations. The study will compare Lang's hypothesis with the classical psychoanalytic hypothesis that the patient's intrapsychic conflicts and internal object relations are the primary determinants of free associative material that emerges during therapy. To compare these two competing viewpoints, a scoring system has been developed which allows the researcher to assess the content of patients' verbalizations following particular therapeutic interventions. Data for the study have been drawn from a research project involving patients in stalemated psychotherapies who were all seen by prominent, classically trained analysts. Consultations were videotaped and then transcribed and scored. Data analysis is focusing on examining cross-correlation lag relationships (CCFs) between the independent variable (type of therapist intervention) and the dependent variable (themes in the client's associations). Both immediate and delayed effects of therapeutic communications on client verbalizations are being assessed in this investigation.
Beverly Winston's doctoral dissertation examines the ego defenses used by patients during psychoanalytic psychotherapy, focusing on: 1) changes in the maturity of defenses over time; 2) the relationship of these changes to therapeutic outcome; and 3) the impact of therapeutic interventions addressing the defenses both on the defenses themselves and on psychotherapy outcome. Understanding and recognizing the client's defenses is particularly important for clinicians since defenses play a central role in psychopathology and symptom formation, as well as being involved in adaptive and achievement-related processes. Twenty-eight patients who have completed short-term (40 session) therapies are the focus of this investigation. Defenses will be assessed using Vaillant's system, wherein defensive styles are classified as immature, intermediate, or mature. As Vaillant has pointed out, studying ego defenses in terms of a hierarchy can give clinicians and researchers a framework that is useful for understanding the range of functions-both adaptive and maladaptive-exhibited by psychotherapy patients. This will be the first systematic investigation of the ways that ego defenses change during the course of psychotherapy. An additional focus of this investigation will be the relationship between changes in defenses and therapeutic outcome as measured by symptom remission, improved interpersonal relations and diminished severity of presenting problems. Finally, this study will examine whether therapeutic interventions that are specifically targeted at addressing clients' defenses lead to measurable changes in defensive style.