Coming Together Through Falling Apart

Abstract

Abstract. Assessing change during long-term psychotherapy can be a challenging and uncertain task. Psychological assessments can be a valuable tool and can offer a perspective from outside the therapy dyad, independent of the powerful and distorting influences of transference and countertransference. Subtle structural changes that may not yet have manifested behaviorally can also be assessed. However, it can be difficult to find a balance between a rigorous, systematic approach to data, while also allowing for the richness of the patient’s internal world to emerge. In this article, the authors discuss a primarily qualitative approach to the data and demonstrate the ways in which this kind of approach can deepen the understanding of the more subtle or complex changes a particular patient is undergoing while in treatment, as well as provide more detail about the nature of an individual’s internal world. The authors also outline several developmental frameworks that focus on the ways a patient constructs their reality and can guide the interpretation of qualitative data. The authors then analyze testing data from a patient in long-term psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy in order to demonstrate an approach to data analysis and to show an example of how change can unfold over long-term treatments.

The Rorschach – From Its Origins to the Future

“…Therefore, Rorschach became a pioneer in shedding light on the psychological processes at work in psychotherapy. His findings were taken up and developed in many later studies (Aschieri & Pascarella, 2021; Churchill & Ridenour, 2019; Exner & Andronikof-Sanglade, 1992; Muench, 1947; Piotrowski, 1942; Weiner & Exner, 1991; among others). Studies of retest after therapy would show the extent to which the psychological evolution of a patient is associated with a reshaping of their world view in relation to new mentalization capacities (Gaudriault et al, 2020).…”