Brief psychodynamic psychotherapy: interrater agreement and reliability of individually specified outcomes

We tested Malan's method of constructing outcome criteria in brief dynamic psychotherapy by positing a core neurotic problem, psychodynamic outcome criteria, and psychodynamically oriented target criteria for 41 neurotic outpatients receiving either psychotherapy or behavioral therapy. We found that trained raters could assess psychodynamic problems and outcomes with high interrater reliability and agreement. Using these measures with behavioral therapy as well as psychodynamic therapy patients, we found that the psychodynamic ratings could be extended to patients not treated psychodynamically. Thus, we feel individualized psychodynamic ratings can be used to assess treatment effects on a reliable psychodynamic basis, and that individualized ratings can be extended to studies which contrast specific psychodynamic outcomes to those of other treatments.