Methodological issues in the content analysis of brief psychotherapy

This is a report of a study which extended D. Malan's methodology for examining three factors typically present in the interpretative work of brief psychotherapy. In his work, the higher incidence of two factors (transference-parent link) were found to correlate with a favourable outcome. In this study operational definitions for defence, anxiety and impulse, the conflict factors associated with interpretive work, were developed and tested on Malan's original data. All cases were rated on six factors (Malan's original person-factors plus the additional conflict factors) and their interlinkages. In the 22 cases the rating scheme applied to more than 95 per cent of all interpretations. Malan's findings were replicated. Problems in deriving this complex rating scheme were delineated and directions for future work were outlined.