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This double issue of the Bulletin, which has also been published in book form, is the final report of the Menninger Foundation's Psychotherapy Research Project that began in 1954 to study the process and outcome of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.
The study was based on forth-two adult patients, half of whom were in psychoanalysis; the remainder received psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy. Only patients diagnosed as having neuroses, character pathology including borderline conditions, and latent psychosis were included. Until treatment ended neither patients nor therapists were informed that they were being studied. Data on each subject were obtained and organized for three points in time—pretreatment, termination, and follow-up, within three general categories of variables—patients, therapy, and environment. One major quantitative approach to handling these variables was the method of 'paired comparisons': patients were ranked as having 'more than' or 'less than' one another in terms of key variables. Within the limitations imposed by small sample size and a large number of variables, hypotheses concerning the outcome of treatment were then statistically tested. Later in the project another method of analyzing the same quantitative data was found in a technique termed Multi-Dimensional Scalogram Analysis, a computerized geometric means of representing groups or categories of data. Based on 'facet theory', a system by which complex concepts or variables are broken down into simple sets of elements or 'facets', this technique allows the most relevant variables to be singled out from a large number, although conclusions cannot be stated in probability terms.
Some major findings and conclusions derived from both these approaches to the data pertinent to the diagnostic entities studied include the following: 1, high initial ego strength (defined in terms of patterning of defenses, anxiety tolerance, quality of interpersonal relationships, and severity of