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This quasi-experimental study explores the interrelationship of measures of structural change, symptomatic change, and psychotherapeutic process in a sample of 25 young adults sequentially assigned to psychoanalysis (n = 14) or psychodynamic psychotherapy (n = 11) at the Anna Freud Centre in London. The Young Adult Weekly Rating Scale (YAWRS), an 899-item questionnaire, was used by analysts to record the presence of manifest, unconscious, transferential, and procedural themes in psychotherapy and psychoanalytic sessions and whether these themes were interpreted by the analyst. Patients were assessed by an independent psychiatrist at intake, at termination, and at 18-month intervals after intake and termination with Main and Goldwyn's Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and on a host of symptomatic and diagnostic measures (SADS-L for DSM Axis I, SCID-II for DSM Axis II, BDI for depression, STAI for anxiety, SAS-M for social adjustment, and SCL-90 for general psychiatric symptomatology).
The patients in this study were 18 to 25 years old, depressed, anxious, and personality disordered. Most had undergone previous psycho-therapeutic treatment, and several had been on medications (though none were currently). Over the course of the treatments, ranging from one to eight years in length, 12 of 19 patients for whom adequate data were collected improved symptomatically according to an aggregate measure of symptoms and diagnoses. Ten of the 12 improvers were in the psychoanalysis treatment group, suggesting that it is a more effective treatment in this population. Data from 1,314 YAWRS questionnaires were factor analyzed and used to operationalize a set of hypotheses derived from the psychotherapy process literature.
In the first year of psychoanalytic treatments (as compared with psychodynamic psychotherapy), higher scores were found on therapist dynamic technique (particularly general interpretation and transference interpretation), patient dynamic material (particularly transf