Past Issues

Objective: This study was to investigate the phenomena of a short term psychoanalytic psychotherapy process based on an analysis of the “transference situation.” Methods: The researcher conducted 20 sessions of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with a 22 year-old woman, who had shown narcissistic character during the assessment before the treatment. The treatment was under supervision by a senior consultant child psychotherapist. All of the therapy sessions were recorded. The session notes were then transcribed and revised for the purpose of confi dentiality. Three psychoanalytically trained clinicians were asked to read the transcripts and identify episodes of patient-therapist interaction characterized by evidence of the “transference situation.” A trained interviewer interviewed the three clinicians about their thought process while identifying these transference phenomena. All interviews were taped and transcribed. Based on 1988 Mahrer’s discovery-oriented method, the researcher then studied and classifi ed the interview content using the modifi ed template analysis style (miller 1966). Results: Kendall coeffi cient of concordance showed that agreement was found among the three clinicians in identifying the “transference situation” (Kendall (W) =0.694), and the consistency was signifi cant (χ2=39.58, p<0.01). Qualitative analysis showed that the identifi ed “transference situation” included fi ve types of “self-representation transference,” three types of “object representation transference,” and six types of “object relations transference.” Amongst them, the six most frequent transference situations were identifi ed. Conclusion: The agreement among the clinicians in the identifi cation and classifi cation of transference situations in the short term psychotherapy process used in this study supports their potential application in psychotherapy.