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Change in patient affect/defense ratio from early to late sessions in brief psychotherapy
Author(s) -
Taurke Elena A.,
Flegenheimer Walter,
McCullouoh Leigh,
Winston Arnold,
Pollack Jerome,
Trujillo Manuel
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/1097-4679(199009)46:5<657::aid-jclp2270460519>3.0.co;2-g
Subject(s) - psychology , psychodynamic psychotherapy , affect (linguistics) , clinical psychology , outcome (game theory) , psychotherapist , psychodynamics , brief psychotherapy , mathematics , mathematical economics , communication
The current study examined changes in the ratio of patients' affective and defensive behaviors during the course of brief psychodynamic psychotherapy. Treatments of 16 patients were videotaped. For each patient, four sessions were evaluated with a minute‐by‐minute coding system of process variables. When patients were grouped according to outcome scores, significant differences between the high outcome and the average‐to‐low outcome groups emerged. During the early phase of treatment, patients in both groups showed an average of one affective response per five defensive responses. By the late phase of treatment, the high outcome patients showed a marked shift to one affective response per two defensive responses, while the low outcome patients remained the same. An incidental finding was a negative correlation between good outcome and the ratio of defensive behavior to total patient activity.