ABSTRACT
By mid-2000, a total of 61 cases from Heidelberg and Berlin had been incorporated into the study; the average length of therapy was approximately two years. This chapter presents a discussion of the study design and the methods developed to measure structural change. It shows this procedure with reference to observations made in the actual course of the psychoanalytic treatment of one particular patient. Furthermore, it focuses on the outcome of preliminary investigations (now complete) on the reliability and validity of this method. The chapter explores the question of the specific quality of therapeutic change that takes place in intensive psychoanalytic treatment on the one hand, and in low-frequency psychodynamic therapies on the other. The hypothesis is that there are qualitatively distinct forms of change that can be designated as “coping” in the one instance and “structural change” in the other.
