Establishing a Method of Systematic and Reliable Analysis of Psychodynamic Process Notes.

Process notes contain unique information concerning core elements of a psychodynamic treatment. These elements may be both conscious and unconscious for the author. One element for study is the tendency to which a therapist writes about providing either supportive or expressive interventions.

Clinical and Research Perspectives on the Therapeutic Conversation: The Case of MS. M.

This paper presents a collaboration between a clinician (C.M.J.

First Validation of the Referential Process Post-Session Scale - Therapist Version (RPPS-T).

Objective: Bucci's multiple code theory maintains that for a significant change the patient-therapist relationship should foster a referential process shaping in three alternating phases: arousal of emotion schemas, symbolizing/narrating emotional experiences, and reflecting/reorganizing the emotional meanings. Until now to monitor these phases clinicians and researchers have used several referential process computerized linguistic measures, which however need the sessions verbatim transcription. In order to have a less time-consuming method we developed and tested a therapist self-report questionnaire measuring the referential process phases.

Overview of the Referential Process: The Operation of Language Within and Between People.

Human mentation involves multiple formats of thought, which are connected substantially but partially, and may operate within or outside of awareness. The modes of thought include symbolic processes which are discrete representations with properties of reference and generativity, and which may be images or words, and subsymbolic components which are continuous in format and based on analogic relationships. The organization of experience is based on memory schemas, including emotion schemas organized through episodes that involve related sensory and bodily experiences with particular people in particular contexts.

Linguistic Measures of the Therapeutic Process in Carl Rogers's Case of Miss Vib.

In the "parallel studies" project led by Carl Rogers at the Counseling Center of the University of Chicago over 70 years ago, measures of personality organization and other clinical ratings were applied to 10 recorded and transcribed cases. This paper applied computerized measures of the referential process to the treatment by Rogers of the client known as Miss Vib. The treatment was considered successful and used by Rogers to illustrate his theory of personality, and his view of the therapeutic process.

The Effects of Story-Telling on Emotional Experience: An Experimental Paradigm.

Telling about emotionally significant events is a basic activity in human relationships and plays an integral role in the process of psychotherapy, in film and literature, and in other contexts where emotional experiences are shared using language. Bringing events and images to mind activates feelings anew; talking about them may further activate and perhaps alter the experiences as registered in the speaker's memory. We review the results of five studies where participants were asked to bring an emotionally significant event to mind and report how they felt at the time (time 1); report how they feel now in the moment of thinking about it (time 2); tell about the event, and report how they felt after telling (time 3).

Locating Nodal Moments Within Psychotherapy Sessions: A Mixed-Methods Study Using a Computerized Measure and Therapist Comments.

A computerized linguistic measure, the Weighted Referential Activity Dictionary (WRAD), was applied to locate nodal turns of speech in psychotherapy, defined here as significant moments of patient emotional communication that are likely to reveal important themes. Two published demonstration sessions conducted by a senior clinician, who made extensive comments on this material, were utilized to illustrate the method. The WRAD, defined in the context of referential process theory, was developed and has been validated as assessing the vividness and immediacy of language.

Development of WRRL: A New Computerized Measure of the Reflecting/Reorganizing Function.

Reflecting/Reorganizing (R/R) is one of the three functions described by Bucci (Overview of the referential process: the operation of language within and between people, 2021a) as part of the referential process. The Weighted Referential Activity Dictionary (WRAD) was previously developed to model the Symbolizing function of the referential process. This paper presents the development of the Weighted Reflecting Reorganizing List (WRRL) as a model of the R/R function.

Development and validation of measures of referential activity.

Early research on the referential process (RP) focused on the function of connecting words and the entities to which they refer, as a trait, a dimension on which people differed in a relatively stable manner. The first study found a correspondence between retrieval time for a small set of color names, hand movements accompanying speech, and features of language content and style, such as use of particular pronouns and direct quotes. The second study supported these results using an early version of the Referential Activity (RA) scales, as well as a task of generating labels for subtly differing stimuli where labels had not been provided.

Referntial Activity as a Measure of Episodic Memory.

A computerized measure of Referential Activity (RA), the High WRAD Proportion (HWP), which assesses the proportion of high RA language in a text, was compared to a widely used measure of episodic memory, the proportion of internal details (IP), those pertaining directly to the main event being described. Both measures, along with several additional computerized measures, were applied to narratives of past and future events, produced by two groups of speakers varying in age. The HWP and IP showed correlations with high effect sizes for all age groups and narrative time periods, providing strong validation for the RA concept and for HWP as a computerized measure of episodic memory.

Narrativity and Referential Activity Predict Episodic Memory Strength in Autobiographical Memories.

Narrativity has been proposed as an indicator of episodic memory strength when people discuss their past (Nelson and Horowitz in Discourse Processes 31:307-324, 2001. https://doi.org/10.

Concluding Notes and Future Directions.

The articles in this issue include experimental research and clinical studies on the bidirectional process of connecting experience and words, which we term the Referential Process (RP). These concluding notes focus on new questions and new directions for research. Studies now under way include characterization and measurement of the Arousal function of the referential process, which involves how people talk when the connection to specific ideas is not yet fully developed, and new research on paralinguistic features of interpersonal communication.

Treatment notes: objective measures of language style point to clinical insights.

Application of a computerized text analysis procedure is proposed that has the potential for use by psychoanalytic and psychodynamic clinicians: the systematic examination of linguistic style as reflected by clinicians in their ongoing process and case notes, which are ubiquitous in the mental health field. The studies reported here are, as far as is known, the first attempts to study treatment notes systematically using such procedures. Linguistic measures are used to track the trajectory of the clinical process throughout the treatment in two contrasting cases, one rated successful, the other not.

Linguistic measures of the referential process in psychodynamic treatment: the English and Italian versions.

The referential process is defined in the context of Bucci's multiple code theory as the process by which nonverbal experience is connected to language. The English computerized measures of the referential process, which have been applied in psychotherapy research, include the Weighted Referential Activity Dictionary (WRAD), and measures of Reflection, Affect and Disfluency. This paper presents the development of the Italian version of the IWRAD by modeling Italian texts scored by judges, and shows the application of the IWRAD and other Italian measures in three psychodynamic treatments evaluated for personality change using the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure (SWAP-200).

Objective measures of subjective experience: the use of therapist notes in process-outcome research.

Computerized linguistic measures of emotional engagement, and reflective and affective language, previously applied to session transcripts, were applied to notes of 14 treatments by candidates under supervision at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, covering the five decades from the 1950s to the 1990s. The findings indicate a strong relationship between candidates' subjective experience as represented unintentionally in the linguistic style of their case notes and the effectiveness of their clinical work. The treatments were evaluated for effectiveness by experienced clinicians using the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) and the Psychodynamic Functioning Scales of Høglend and colleagues; a Composite Clinical Effectiveness (CCE) measure was constructed based on level and change in these measures.

Beneath the surface of the therapeutic interaction: the psychoanalytic method in modern dress.

This study represents a new generation of psychotherapy process research, using multiple perspectives on the data of the analytic situation, including impressions of the treating analyst, ratings of complete sessions by clinical judges, and objective linguistic measures. Computerized measures of language style developed in the framework of multiple code theory were applied to verbatim session recordings from a psychoanalytic case; the measures are illustrated in microanalyses of the process in two sessions. The results show agreement between the linguistic measures and clinical ratings based on a psychoanalytic perspective.

Factors affecting change in private psychotherapy patients of senior psychoanalysts: an effectiveness study.

Each of 51 experienced psychiatrist/psychoanalysts was queried about the clinical characteristics of every private psychotherapy patient presently in treatment: 551 patients were included in the study; 88% of patients had an Axis I disorder, 59% had Axis I and Axis II disorders concurrently, and 11% Axis II only. Of these patients, 44% had been prescribed psychotropic medication on a daily basis for at least 2 weeks during the present treatment. Patients treated for the longest time (5 years or more) were the most seriously psychiatrically disturbed.

The Penn Psychoanalytic Treatment Collection: a set of complete and recorded psychoanalyses as a research resource.

From a set of seventeen complete and tape-recorded psychoanalyses, a sample of findings is presented: (a) the level of agreement of two clinical judges on the psychological health of these patients is adequate for the late sessions, but not for the early sessions; (b) the amount of change during psychoanalysis appears to be similar to that in the Menninger Foundation Psychotherapy Research Project; (c) psychiatric severity measures from the early sessions can yield a significant level of prediction of the later benefits from psychoanalysis. Finally, further research uses of this collection of psychoanalyses are suggested.