INFLUENCE OF THE SETTING ON THERAPEUTIC V ERBALIZATION OF AFFECTIONS

In psychotherapy research vocabulary measures are still an exception, although clinically relevant hypotheses might well be investigated by means of those measures. The affective vocabulary seems to be particul arly apt to serve as an indicator of psychotherapeutic processes, sinc e the ''processing of emotions'' can be regarded as a crucial part of any kind of psychotherapy. The emotion theory of Dahl and a classifica tion schema derived from DeRivera will be explained in the text. The d evelopment of the Affective Dictionary Ulm (ADU), a computer measure f or evaluation of affective vocabulary was based on this classification system. The distinction between two important categories of emotions, it-emotions (like anger) referring to wishes about objects, and me-em otions (like depression) reflecting self states, i.e. beliefs about th e status of wish fulfillment, will be explained. The study described f ocuses on the affective vocabulary of one psychotherapist in three dif ferent settings: initial interviews, short term therapy and psychoanal ysis. It can be demonstrated, that the ''intensity'' of the setting si gnificantly positivly correlates with the use of words indicating obje ct (or it-) emotions. According to the transference paradigm, these re sults suggest, that the intensification of psychodynamic settings lead to an increasing work on help to regulate object relationships.