Mark T. Sammons

An Empirical Investigation of the Analysis of Transference: an Application of Frames and Referential Activity to the Study of Psychotherapy Process in the Case of Mrs. C Mark T. Sammons

Psychoanalysts agree on the therapeutic importance of the analysis of transference. This book represents the first empirically rigorous study of whether the analysis of transference produces lasting changes in a patient's personality by examining the case of Mrs. C., the most widely studied psychoanalytic treatment. A study of FRAMES (Fundamental Repetitive and Maladaptive Emotion Structures)as they appear over the course of a psychoanalytic treatment can test if the analysis of transference is curative. FRAMES are formal representations of recurrent patterns of a patient's behavior, extracted from transcripts of sessions. The emotion expressions that form the raw material of FRAMES result from the psychological processes that underlie Referential Activity, a measure of ?the capacity to express all manner of nonverbal experience, particularly emotional experience, in verbal form." The referential process mediates alteration of maladaptive emotion structures in psychoanalytic treatment. The present study serves as some of the strongest empirical evidence to date of the efficacy of psychoanalytic techniques.