Do Interpersonal Behavior and Emotional Experience Change in the Course of Successful Long-Term Psychoanalytic Therapies?

Abstract

The way in which patients behave toward others is considered to be a correlate of mental health and thus of successful psychotherapy. Until now, research regarding the extent to which this assumption is justified has produced contradictory findings. On the basis of 2 definitions of normal interpersonal behavior (Benjamin, 1993; Crits-Christoph, Demorest, Muenz, & Baranackie, 1994), the authors studied 10 patients undergoing psychoanalytic therapy to determine whether changes in their descriptions of interpersonal relationships were associated with a decrease in self-reported symptoms and interpersonal problems during the first 2 years of treatment. Using a hierarchical linear model, the authors identified moderate to high correlations in the expected direction: The patients' affiliative behavior toward their objects as well as the average valence and variability of their affective experience increased when therapy was successful. In contrast, patients' descriptions of their objects' behavior did not change in a systematic manner.