THE NONRANDOM NATURE OF COMMUNICATION IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

The second-by-second behavior of the scores for patients and therapist s on five quantified measures/dimensions of emotional communication us ed to characterize communicative vehicles was analyzed and compared to both theoretically random and simulated random data. Four criteria fo r randomness were developed, one distributional, two parametric and on e entropic. Simulation was used to match the number of patient and the rapist selections of combinations of the five variables across an enti re session for parity in comparing simulated random data with actual p sychotherapy data. In all cases, the significant statistical finding w as that simulated random data meet the four criteria for randomness, w hile the actual patient and therapist psychotherapy data do not. We co nclude that the vicissitudes of the items chosen for observation show non-random configurations and that patient and therapist variations of their communicative vehicles reflect inherent properties of emotional expression. These results support the view that human behavior is inn ately structured and patterned, and may be scientifically studied for non-random meanings and functions.