Can we learn on Psychotherapeutic Process Dimensions with Single Case Study?

Abstract

Relational psychoanalysis states that an adequate management of the intersubjective processes displayed in psychotherapy are essential to promote effective change. The analysis about some variables of the therapist and patient and the complex and co-determined interaction between them, give us new perspectives on the therapeutic process. This analysis leads us to question some topics and consider from a new view the therapist's functions and the patient's roles within the therapeutic process. A group of researchers in Spain, Argentine, Mexico and Germany have worked along a decade (1997-2008) in the Salamanca-Barcelona-Madrid Project on Psychotherapy Process Research. This project, an study conducting single case research (´The Publicist´ case), along the main phases of complete treatment (up to 200 recorded sessions), have given us the opportunity to adquire a better knowledge on therapeutic process, through the content analysis of sessions and with qualitative data using a wide variety of procedures.  In this paper we are presenting relevant results concerning some inferences on therapeutic process along the whole treatment and their phases. Crossing all the studied dimensions, we propose a comprehensive model of change observed in the case object of study, considering all the approaches, both from quantitative and qualitative methods and process dimensions, both the contributions of the therapist and the patient to psychotherapeutic process. Results are discussed in the light of recent perspectives on active use of counter-transference as a therapist’s tool to improve the psychoanalytic psychotherapy process, controlling negative aspects of countertransference collusions.