[The outcome of conflict in psychotherapy]

The authors examine several problems arising from the need to assess the psychotherapeutic processes and their effects, and the difficulties for finding valuable criteria to carry out the assessments. They propose a method centered on evaluation the changes that undergoes the central conflict: [Edipus complex, by means of several psychological tests to be taken at regular intervals during the course of psychotherapy. The tests are: a) House-Tree-Person; b) Wechsler; c) Bender; d) Rohrshach; e) Phillipson. The central thesis is that focal oedipical conflicts envolve necessarily together with defensive systems, objectal inner world, identifications, global structures of the ego, etecetera. That means the focal conflict can be used as an indicator to assess the state, evolution and functionning for the whole psychic apparatus. In support of those theses, several clinical cases are presented, together with some fragments of Phillipson test for each of them. The general conclusions stress the validity of the proposed method.