The application of computerized content analysis of natural language in psychotherapy research now and in the future

For many years the author and his colleagues have been involved in studying the roots and processes of the conveyance of semantic messages via spoken language and verbal texts. After establishing that reliable and valid measurements of highly relevant neuropsychiatric categories, such as anxiety, depression, and cognitive impairment, can be made by identifying and counting the occurrence per grammatical clause of language content and form categories typifying specific content-analysis scales, the research focus has turned towards computerizing this process of content analysis. This report summarizes the achievements and applications of the current empirical status of this method of computerized content analysis of natural language to psychotherapy research, and it speculates on possible future applications in the millennium.