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.
Of common interest to clinician and psychologist is the relationship between changes which occur during the early days of a series of interviews, and changes which occur later during the series.
The clinician scrutinizes the behavior of the subject during trial interviews for the purpose of deciding whether the individual would benefit from a longer series of interviews by a particular method. The judgment of the clinician depends upon his expectations about the relationship of the changes seen in the trial interviews to changes which he might observe under subsequent interviewing conditions. How can these expectations be objectified? This is the aspect of the matter which appeals particularly to the psychologist, and the findings and hypotheses given here are intended to bear upon the problem.
The general circumstances surrounding the present research have been described in another communication.1 The subjects were volunteers who were acquainted with the scientific and non-therapeutic purposes of the investigation. They agreed to abide by the psychoanalytic rule of candid association. Only healthy or slightly neurotic persons were accepted. A verbatim record was secured of all that was said by subject or interviewer. A continuous record of changes in electrical conductivity of the skin, of pulse pressure, and of pulse frequency was obtained by the procedures devised by