SELF SCHEMAS AND SPOUSAL BEREAVEMENT - COMPARING QUANTITATIVE AND CLINICAL-EVIDENCE

A schematic-discrepancy model of spousal bereavement was examined by c omparing three sources of evidence from a middle-aged bereaved woman: a rating task, a structured and consensually derived case formulation, and psychotherapy transcripts. The subject rated a set of idiographic ally derived words according to their self-descriptiveness from the st andpoint of 10 different self perspectives. Each perspective figured p rominently in the subject's psychotherapy sessions and in the case for mulation. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to analyze the rating s. The case formulation followed Horowitz's (1987) ''configurational a nalysis'' approach, which emphasizes inferences about schemas of self and other. Results indicated a high degree of overlap between the thre e sources of evidence, with the exception that guilt was less apparent in the rating task than in other sources of information.