Editorial

Repertory grids have been around for a long time, and have been used in a number of research areas in psychology and psychotherapy. They form a method for mapping the systems of meaning used by a human mind, and with which each individual gives himself a structure for thinking about his experience. And it is a method quite remote from psychodynamic concepts.

Unfortunately few psychotherapists know much about the method; and that is because it is to do with the intense mathematical concentration which is required to comprehend the method. And most of us psychotherapists are mathematically slack, one reason we are psychotherapists rather than ‘proper’ scientists. However it seemed worth drawing to the attention of the readers of the Journal the papers we publish in this issue by Ray Brown and Marco Chiesa. Projective identification has also been around for a long time and often seems to have an equally bemused reception. The realisation that it can be tracked down by a research technique and measured with numbers is elegantly demonstrated in the second of these papers. The first is, in contrast, an attempt to provide an introductory overview of this psychological theory that gives rise to the versatile research technique of repertory grids.

David Alexander and John Eagles, in a prospective study, look at much simpler numbers when they investigate clinical, demographic and other variables that affect the chances of receiving psychotherapy of all kinds. As they say, these interesting observations need to be extended to the quality of outcome of the treatments that patients are guided towards. An attempt to look at outcome criteria, and in relation to certain variables at intake, is reported by Cecilia Clementel-Jones, David Malan and Tom Trauer. The psychotherapy was of course wholly psychoanalytic in orientation, but it demonstrated that one of the most important factors in outcome was the length of time in treatment; at least 60 sessions, say a year and a half, before s