THE TALKING CURE REVISITED - CONTENT ANALYSES OF A 2-YEAR PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY

A 208-session treatment (previously investigated by Jones, Ghannam, Ni gg, & Dyer, 1993) was studied using two computer-assisted content anal ytic strategies. The first measured the patient's associative freedom by determining the Go-Occurrence Rate of commonly associated word pair s. The second measured the topics of each session by determining the p roportion of topic-related words in each session. Results revealed tha t the patient's associative freedom: (a) increased with time (replicat ing the results of Spence, Dahl, & Jones, 1993), (b) was influenced by the use of psychodynamic techniques, and (c) predicted symptom change . The analyses of the topic of discussion revealed that (a) the therap ist displayed a nonneutral attitude (paradoxically shown to be helpful by Jones et al., 1993) while discussing certain key topics, and (b) t he patient's discussion of these topics was related to symptom improve ment. Results are discussed in terms of their contribution to an under standing of the case as well as theory of psychotherapy process.