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This study applies computerized language measures to detailed ongoing day-by-day and week-by-week session notes of a psychoanalytic treatment carried out in the 1950s by a candidate at the Treatment Center of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. This is a preliminary study for a larger project that will examine changes in theory and technique at the NYPI over five decades, from 1950 to 1990, using candidates' session notes from the NYPI archives. The main goal is to examine the scientific value of this resource: What are the notes good for? How they can be used?
Session notes covering two years of treatment carried out in the 1950s and rated as unsuccessful were retyped following the transcription rules of the Discourse Attributes Analysis Program (DAAP), a computerized text analysis system developed by Maskit and Bucci (Bucci 2005). Computerized measures of Referential Activity, Negative Affect, Positive Affect, Neutral Affect, and Reflection were applied to the notes using the DAAP system. Content dictionaries covering major themes including sexuality, aggression, treatment-related issues, and general relational themes were developed using the vocabulary of the treatment, and applied using DAAP.
In previous studies of analytic treatments (Bucci 2002), effective analytic work was associated with generally higher patient Referential Activity measured as the Weighted Referential Activity Dictionary (WRAD), indicating the patient's capacity to express emotional experience in evocative imagistic and narrative form, and negative WRAD/REF covariation, indicating the patient's capacity for immersion without intellectualization.