Abstract
I’ll first tell the story of the preparation for tracking a whale-sized theme, “the core conflictual relationship theme,” and then tell its method. The idea surfaced recently after a long search for the curative factors in psychotherapy (Luborsky, in press). It took shape as part of the perspective gained after seeing the consistent results of the three largest multivariate predictive psychotherapy studies: the Chicago Counseling Center Project (Fiske, Cartwright & Kirtner, 1964), the Mitchell et al. Arkansas Project (1973), and the Penn Psychotherapy Project (Luborsky et al., in progress).
This study was supported in part by USPHS Research Grant MH 15442 and Research Scientist Award MH 40710 to Dr. Luborsky, and by the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, Philadelphia.
The author wishes to thank Marjorie Cohen for her assistance in the preparation of this paper.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Arlow, J. Ego psychology in the study of mythology. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1961, 9:371–393.
Arlow, J. Unconscious fantasy and disturbances of conscious experience. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1969, 38: 1–27. (a)
Arlow, J. Fantasy, memory, and reality testing. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1969, 38:28–51. (b)
Aron, Betty. A manual for analyses of the thematic apperception test. Berkeley, Calif.: Willis E. Berg, 1949.
Block, J. Recognizing the coherence of personality. Unpublished manuscript, July, 1975.
Blos, P. The adolescent personality. A study of individual behavior for the commission on secondary school curriculum. New York-London: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1941.
Curtis, H. Toward a metapsychology of transference. Paper read to American Psychoanalytic Association, New York, 1973.
Dahl, H. A quantitative study of a psychoanalysis. In R. R. Holt & E. Peterfreund (Eds.), Psychoanalysis & Contemporary Science, Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan Company, 1972.
Ekstein, R. Psychoanalytic techniques. In D. Brower & L. E. Abt (Eds.), Progress in clinical psychology, Vol. 2. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1956.
Fiske, D. W., Cartwright, D. S., & Kirtner, W. L. Are psychotherapeutic changes predictable? Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology, 1964, 69:4l8–426.
Freud, S. (1914). Remembering, repeating and working through. In J. Strachey (Ed.), Standard Edition, Vol. 2. London: Rogarth Press, 1955.
Freud, S. (1937). Analyses terminable and interminable. In J. Strachey (Ed.), Standard Edition, Vol. 23. London: Hogarth Press, 1964.
French, T. & Wheeler, D. R. Hope and repudiation of hope in psychoanalytic therapy. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1963, 44:304–316.
Gottschalk, L. & Gleser, G. The measurement of psychological states through the content analysis of verbal behavior. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
Graff, H. & Luborsky, L. Long-term trends in transference and resistance: A quantitative analytic method applied to four psychoanalyses. Journal of the Psychoanalytic Association, in press.
Hoehn-Saric, R., Frank, J., Imber, S., Nash, E., Stone, A., & Battle, C. Systematic preparation of patients for psychotherapy. 1. Effects on therapy behavior and outcome. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 1964, 2:267–281.
Horowitz, L. M., Sampson, H., Siegelman, E., Wolfson, A., & Weiss, J. On the identification of warded-off mental contents. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1975, 84:545–558.
Kelly, G. A. The psychology of personal construct, Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1955.
Kernberg, O., Burstein, E., Coyne, L., Appelbaum, A., Horowitz, L., & Voth, H. Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis: Final report of the Menninger Foundations Psychotherapy Research Project. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 1972, 36:1–275.
Luborsky, L. Momentary forgetting during psychotherapy and psychoanalysis: A theory and research method. In R. R. Holt (Ed.), Motives and thought: Psychoanalytic essays in honor of David Rapaport. New York: International Universities Press, 1967.
Luborsky, L. Helping alliances in psychotherapy: The groundwork for a study of their relationship to its outcome. In J. L. Claghorn (Ed.), Successful psychotherapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, in press. (a)
Luborsky, L. Curative factors in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapies. In J. P. Brady, J. Mendels, M. Orne, & W. Rieger (Eds.), Psychiatry: Areas of promise and advancement. New York: Spectrum, in press. (b)
Luborsky, L. & Auerbach, A. H. The symptom-context method: Quantitative studies of symptom formation in psychotherapy. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1969, 17:68–99.
Luborsky, L., Graff, H., Pulver, S., & Curtis, H. A clinical-quantitative examination of consensus on the concept of transference. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1973, 29:69–75.
Luborsky, L., Crabtree, L., Curtis, H., Ruff, G., & Mintz, J. The concept “space” of transference for eight psychoanalysts. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 1975, 48:1–6.
Luborsky, L., Singer, B., & Luborsky, Lise. Comparative studies of psychotherapies: Is it true that “Everybody has won and all must have prizes?” Archives of General Psychiatry, 1975, 32:995–1008.
Luborsky, L. & Mintz, J. Psychotherapy: Who benefits and how. (Book in progress.)
Malan, D. H. A study of brief psychotherapy. London: Tavistock Publishing, 1963.
Marsden, G. Content analysis studies of psychotherapy: 1954 through 1968. In A. Bergin & S. Garfield (Eds.), Handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change. New York: Wiley, 1971.
Mayman, M. Early memories and character structure. Journal of Projective Techniques, 1968, 32:303–316.
Mayman, M. & Faris, M. Early memories as expressions of relationship paradigms. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1960, 30:507–520.
Mitchell, K., Bozarth, J., Truax, C., & Krauft, C. Antecedents to psychotherapeutic change. An NIMH Final Report, MH 12306, March, 1973.
Murray, H. A. Explorations in personality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938.
Orne, M. & Wender, P. Anticipatory socialization for psychotherapy: Method and rationale. American Journal of Psychiatry, 1968, 124: 88–98.
Pfeffer, A. The meaning of the analyst after analyses: A contribution to the theory of therapeutic results. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1963, 11:229–244.
Rogers, C. R. The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1957, 21: 95–103.
Rogers, C. R. & Dymond, R. F. Psychotherapy and personality change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954.
Rosenzweig, S. Some implicit common factors in diverse methods of psychotherapy. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1936, 6:412–415.
Sampson, H., Weiss, J., Mlodnovsky, L., & House, E. Defense analyses and the emergence of warded-off mental contents: An empirical study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1972, 26:524–532.
Schlessinger, N. & Robbins, F. The psychoanalytic process: Recurrent patterns of conflict and changes in ego. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1975, 23:761–782.
Sifneos, P. E. Short-term psychotherapy and emotional crisis. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1977 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Luborsky, L. (1977). Measuring a Pervasive Psychic Structure in Psychotherapy: The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme. In: Freedman, N., Grand, S. (eds) Communicative Structures and Psychic Structures. The Downstate Series of Research in Psychiatry and Psychology, vol 1. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0492-1_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0492-1_16
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-0494-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-0492-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive