Patterns of Discourse in “Good” and Troubled Hours: a Multiple Code Interpretation

Abstract

Multiple code theory is a theory of psychological organization, which is rooted in current research in the areas of cognitive psychology, emotion, and development; it accounts for adaptive functions as well as pathology. The theory incorporates Freud's seminal discovery of modes of thought outside the conscious, rational mode, but recognizes three rather than two forms: subsymbolic nonverbal, symbolic nonverbal, and symbolic verbal. Computer-assisted procedures assessing these three forms are applied to verbatim transcripts of a long-term, fully recorded psychoanalysis. The measures point to the patient's central themes, allow evaluation of the analyst's interventions as facilitating or impeding the patient's explorations, and facilitate more rigorous comparison of differing clinical views. The discourse pattern in an early session was found to anticipate that in the treatment as a whole; the pattern in a later session indicates how this treatment may have become disrupted. The measures point to affiliative themes in the patient material that were not emphasized by previous researchers studying this case.