The relationship of defensive language behavior in patient monologues to the course of psychoanalysis

Examined the relationship of the time-course of psychoanalysis to progressive alteration of defensive language behavior in 7 patients. Spontaneous 5-minute monologues were recorded over 1 1/2 years of three-times-a-week individual psychotherapy. Weintraub and Aronson's (1962) formal measures of defensive language were used: nonpersonal references, negators, qualifiers, retractors, explaining expressions of feeling, and evaluators. The magnitude of defensive speech displayed by a patient was able to predict significantly the duration of psychoanalysis undergone by that patient in 4 of 7 cases.