Units of observation and perspectives on the psychoanalytic process.

Over the past quarter century, brief segments of tape-recorded psychotherapy have become the most widely employed unit for the empirical investigation of the psychotherapeutic process. Our aim was to see how judgements based upon brief segments of tape-recorded psychoanalysis corresponded with judgements based upon the hours from which they were taken. Seven experienced psychoanalysts independently made clinical and quantitative judgements about 29 treatment-related variables on 24 five-minute segments excerpted from psychoanalytic sessions and on the 12 whole sessions from which they were taken.

Some pitfalls in the assessment of analyzability in a psychoanalytic clinic.

We have described some of the problems encountered in an analyzability committee's evolving approach to the assessment of applicants to a psychoanalytic clinic. A primary error was to think in terms of the level of drive development--equating pathology at an oedipal level with analyzability. Recognition that the more important issue for assessment purposes was the presence or absence of those ego capacities and personality characteristics necessary for success in analysis has led to a reorientation of our approach.