RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL-CLASS AND THE RAPISTS KNOWLEDGE OF PATIENTS BIOGRAPHY

Within psychotherapy it is of great importance how much psychotherapis ts know of their patients' outer living circumstances, their situation in the past and in the present. In this study the information content of the biographical anamneses of a representative sample consisting o f n = 232 were examined with the aid of the GBI (Gottingen Biography I nventory; Ruger et al., 1996 a). The relationship between the patient' s social class and the therapist's knowledge of his biography were stu died. The guiding hypothesis in this study was the closer the social c lass of therapist and patient the more the therapist knows about the p atient's biography. While no dependency between biographical informati on density and education level could be found on a global level there were clear differences regarding the development in puberty and adoles cence. This is significantly higher for patients having finished schoo l with the German Abitur than for patients with a lower education leve l. There are also clear differences regarding the working life of moth ers; for people with less educaton there is significantly less informa tion than for patients having a higher education. The results are disc ussed to the effect that the similarity between the therapist's and th e patient's education level influences the patient's interest in certa in aspects of life and therefore also affects how well patient and the rapist, fit' to each other. The differences in claims and indication f or psychotherapy depending on the social class is also discussed on th e background of these results.