Process research in psychodynamic psychotherapy: a combined measure for accuracy and conflictuality of interpretations
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: In dynamic psychotherapy the quality of therapist interpretations depends not only on their congruence with the patient's problem focus but also on their containing conflictual elements. The main impact of interventions revealing conflicts may be expected for psychotherapies that go beyond the goal of symptom relief and aim at changes in basic relational and emotional schemes. Existing methods permit the evaluation of the congruence of the therapist interpretations but not of the conflict addressing. This paper presents a method based on the CCRT (Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method developed by Luborsky and Crits-Christoph, 1990) to assess accuracy together with the amount and type of conflict addressing in psychotherapeutic interpretations. The transcribed texts from brief psychodynamic intervention interviews in 29 outpatients were rated for accuracy and for conflictuality (as the ratio of conflict addressing interpretations per session). The Psychodynamic Intervention Rating Scales (PIRS, Cooper and Bond, 1992) were applied for identifying therapists' interpretive interventions. Results indicate that only the sum of accuracy and conflictuality scores, but neither one or the other alone, shows significant correlations with therapeutic alliance (HAq) and interpersonal problems (IIP). The number of conflict addressing interpretations was 1.34 per session. The great majority (58.4%) of conflict addressing interpretations aims at a conflict between two wishes and largely behind (10.2%) we find conflicts between wish and reaction of subject and between response from object and reaction of subject. The authors conclude that the adjunction of a measure of conflict addressing to the existing measures of accuracy may be a promising way to improve the assessment of the quality of dynamic interpretations.
Author: ,
Language: German
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2521481609