The problem of the unit of study in the investigation of the psychotherapeutic discourse and process

Abstract

Review of empirical and methodological literature concerning studies of psychotherapeutic discourse indicates that the selection of units for study is infrequently carried out on a principled basis. To help remedy this situation, seven descriptive dimensions with which scoring units can be explicity defined are presented and explicated. In addition, four critical dilemmas are identified that process researchers will have to confront in providing rationales for their particular unit choices. Curricular changes and new guidelines for research reports are recommended as means to facilitate area wide sophistication and accountability in process research.Classical psychiatry has frequently emphasized linguistic phenomena in psychopathology, especially in relation to schizophrenia; however, this focus has not studied language nuances, characteristic of emotional ilness as variants in expressive styles, rather the focus has been on particularities in speech as representative of disturbed thought processes. This article examines the vicissitudes in the study of schizophrenic language from the mid-nineteenth century and shows how these past developments have given rise to confusion regarding the mental status of the psychologically disturbed. To remedy this confusion the present article proposes alternate forms of conceptualizing the linguistic phenomena associated with psychopathology, advocating for the conceptualizing of language particularities in psychopatologies as specific differential expressive styles, as can be demonstrated with the examples of schizophrenia and obsessive disorder.