ABSTRACT
The problem of methodology was the major concern of our team of investigators throughout the first year of the project. Although we had agreed on the basic concept that both the psychotherapeutic case and the psychoanalytic case would be observed by teams of psychoanalysts, the question of how and what to observe, as well as how and what to record, proved to be an extremely knotty one. There was no difficulty, of course, about the verbal material. That was to be recorded in any event, and a permanent transcript of the verbal transactions of each hour would be preserved. The nonverbal material, however, presented a difficult problem. There were some within the investigating team that wanted to make a record of every nonverbal transaction to the fullest possible extent. They advocated recording not merely obvious facial expressions and emotional reactions, but also more minute movements of every part of the body that was observable in both patient and therapist. For a while, indeed, an effort was made to see whether such a record could be kept, but it soon became apparent that this would involve the amassment of mountains of data that would utterly defy any subsequent efforts at processing.
