You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The primary aim of this study was to investigate patients' conceptualizations of self and significant others—namely, their therapist and parents—during the first 6 months of psychodynamic psychotherapy. In addition, this study explored the relationship of character pathology to the conceptual levels of patients' representations of self, parents, and therapist.
Over the past several decades, increasing attention has been devoted to individuals' patterns of symbolizing perceptions of, and interactions with, significant others (e.g., Diamond et al., 1990; Lerner and St. Peter, 1984; Westen, 1990). Various notions of how people mentally represent themselves, others, and their interpersonal dynamics have infused both clinical theory and practice (e.g., Blatt and Behrends, 1987; Bricker et al., 1993; Geller and Farber, 1993; Strupp, 1978). Many theoretical perspectives, some of which seem rather divergent, view the intrapsychic representation of an individual's earliest relationships with primary caregiving figures as the focal point for understanding the salient features of how one relates to others as an adult. Pine (1985), for example, described the psychology of the individual “as coming about through the laying down as memories and fantasies of early interactions (or imagined interactions) between the person and significant caretakers, so that behavioral expectancies, longing for particular gratifications, knowings of behaviors that will produce expectable responses are recorded and can be repeated” (p. 174).