SEQUENTIAL-ANALYSIS OF TOPICS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY DISCOURSE - A SINGLE-CASE STUDY

While content analysis of discourse has a rich history, relatively lit tle research has been aimed at identifying topics by their content. In this paper we test the assumption that identifying the content and se quences of topics reveals clinically useful information about a person 's mental structure, by studying change in the discourse structure ove r the course of a single therapy and by demonstrating the relevance th e discourse structure and content have for the ease. A new method is p resented for idiographically identifying topics of discourse by conten t and applied to the entire therapy of a single case of prolonged and severe bereavement. Through sequential analysis of the structure of pa tient discourse, sequential patterns of associated topics were reveale d that converged with clinical case formulations and with clinicians' and patient's ratings of the importance of the identified topics to th e case. Patterns of changing associations among topics from the first to the second half of therapy are interpreted as indicating an increas ed flexibility in the accessibility of clinically relevant topics.