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Following on the work of the Menninger Psychotherapy Project, the authors examine the issue of how to assess structural changes in patients undergoing psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Noting that in psychoanalysis at the present time there is a multiplicity of distinct theoretical perspectives, including the
ego psychological, object relational, Kleinian, Bionian, self psychological and Lacanian, the authors contend that one cannot talk about structural change without reference to a specific personality theory. Since development of a unified theory seems to be a long way off, and the need now is to determine whether intensive forms of psychotherapy are more powerful than other interventions, Zilberg and his co-workers have developed an indirect method of assessing underlying change in people, which is theoretically informed but also independent of theoretical perspectives. This method is the development of a measure that they call "Scales of Psychological Capacities." These capacities are resources which are necessary to achieve adaptive functioning and life satisfaction—constructs at the level of clinical observation. The capacities are divided into subcapacities and each subcapacity is described at four levels, from optimally present to virtually absent. The authors discuss the factors leading to the level at which the psychological capacities stabilize. The choice of capacities is determined by the requirement that they allow mapping of structural change by any major dynamic theoretician. Appendices are added giving examples of the capacities in the scale.