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Dear Editors,
Since Sigmund Freud postulated, through the analysis of patients, the technical and metapsychological aspects that lead to the consolidation of psychoanalysis as a science, more than a hundred years of clinical experience corroborate it as a useful instrument to treat psychic pain, symptoms and interpersonal problems. However, the advent of evidence-based medicine brought the challenge of developing adequate tools and methods to investigate systematically the effectiveness of the analytical model and specific aspects related to patient's changing process. The efficacy of manualized analytically oriented treatments of several psychiatric pathologies is well established through clinical trials (Fonagy, Roth and Higgitt, 2005; Leichsenring and Leibing, 2007; Milrod, Leon and Busch, 2007; Roth and Fonagy, 2005). However, studies in analytically oriented group psychotherapy are still incipient (; Knijnik, in press).
To ensure the use of proper methodology in studies aiming to investigate psychotherapy methods, one must carefully define the technique that is being tested and how to measure if the treatment corresponds to the defined model, for example, a psychoanalytical approach. In 1985, E. Jones (1985) developed an instrument with the purpose of investigating the role of different factors involved in therapeutic process, the Psychotherapy Process Q-Sort (PQS), which was published a couple of years later (Jones, 2000). The PQS comprises 100 items describing a wide range of treatment aspects. This instrument is applicable to taped (audio or video) sessions, promoting a detailed description of the elements of the therapeutic process. However, previous training and a considerable amount of time are necessary, making it not recommended in research settings with fewer resources available. Therefore, our purpose was to create a less complex and shorter instrument, easier to use, and at low cost, for research purposes.
In order to develop a tool to verify the psycho