The present study examines the relationships between lung transplant recipients and their unknown, deceased donors. Out of 20 semi-structured interviews, eight narratives, by three female and three male recipients respectively, were identified in which the figure of the donor played a role. These narratives were examined using JAKOB, a qualitative research tool that analyses relational configurations and diagnoses psychodynamic conflicts. Analysis revealed a broad range of varying themes and relationships with equally varying wish and fear themes. All the narrators dealt either explicitly or implicitly with whether and how they are connected to their donors. In five narratives, specific personality traits were attributed to the figure of the donor; in four narratives, latent feelings of guilt concerning the donor's death were expressed. Indeed, the figure of the donor was not always perceived as an independent person, separate from the narrator's self: in two cases, the donor appears as part of the recipient's self, while in another case, the donor is presented as a transitional object for the recipient. The findings of the narrative analysis are discussed within a theoretical model of psychical organ integration.

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When a patient tells a story during psychotherapy sessions, it is both a mutual interaction between patient and therapist and a presentation of personal experience. The patient calls up and re-creates a biographical occurrence and puts it before a listener for viewing, enacting it verbally in the perspective of wish fulfillment and anxiety coping. JAKOB narrative analysis, situated in the field of psychoanalytical and narrative analytical research, is an encoding-supported qualitative instrument for the systematic reconstruction of verbal everyday narratives in the context of psychotherapeutic processes. In this study, the JAKOB narrative analysis is described in detail with the aid of an example narrative, put in relation to the therapeutic process, and discussed critically from a methodological viewpoint.

An appreciation of the ways in which clients and patients tell stories in psychotherapy is essential to an understanding of the therapeutic process. This paper reports findings arising from a programme of research into the analysis of patient narratives in psychotherapy sessions and diagnostic interviews. The focus of the current paper is on the analysis of the use of language in patient-therapist interaction during the recounting in therapy of dream narratives. Dream-telling follows certain rules of presentation that can be described as a set of specific rhetorical practices. The rhetoric of the dream-teller reporting a dream is one of emotional distance, reflecting a narrative sequence which lacks a motivational framework. The report needs to be put into context by establishing a dialogue with the listener. The sharing of the dream with another, especially in the psychotherapeutic context, represents the dreamteller's attempt to reproduce the dream experience. This attempt is made with reference to a responding and commenting other. The function -or dysfunction -of the assumption of hidden, non-obvious, non-recognisable wish-fulfillment scenarios in patients' dreams is discussed. A method of working with dream material derived from narrative research is briefly described: the dramaturgical approach. This approach emphasises collaborative negotiation between client/patient and therapist, and combines the idea of free association with dream reconstruction and embedding the dream in current concerns, desires, and challenges.

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