A semiotic approach to suitability for psychotherapy

At the beginning of my career as a psychotherapist I interviewed a number of patients in an effort to find one who seemed to be a good prospect for long-term psychotherapy. While interviewing with this purpose in mind, I was struck by the fact that a number of the people I spoke with gave me a sense of being extremely suitable for this sort of therapy, but that others seemed quite unsuitable. An informal survey among my peers as well as among more senior therapists revealed that they were not unfamiliar with the phenomenon. The present empirical study of the semiotic aspects of suitability for psychotherapy grew out of this early experience.