Dana J. Redington

Topics and Signs: Defensive Control of Emotional Expression.

This single-case study examined frank disclosure of important topics in a brief exploratory psychotherapy, including topics closely related to a recent, unintegrated stressor life event. Quantitative measures of emotion and control variables showed heightened levels of both emotionally and defensive control during discourse on the topic of the stressor event. In future studies, such measures of verbal and nonverbal signs of emotional expression and defensive control might be used to identify topics in an unresolved state.

Pathological grief: an intensive case study.

Pathological mourning is such an excessive, blocked, or distorted process that psychiatric signs and symptoms develop. Explanation of how and why these signs and symptoms form could deepen an understanding of both normal and pathological mourning. Because many variables are involved in such explanations, intensive case study is a desirable methodology because it permits a detailed look at how various factors interact (Brewer and Hunter 1989; Luborsky and Mintz 1972; Luborsky and Spence 1971; Nessleroade and Ford 1985). While a patient may complain of symptoms as experiences that endure or occur episodically over days and weeks, a clinician observes psychiatric signs in the here-and-now seconds and minutes of an interview. Relating signs and symptoms to each other and to other variables in order to form a theoretical model of their formation requires exploration of data across long and short time frames. It is important to understand how the here-and-now phenomena combine to form patterns across longer periods of the individuals life. Hence, we developed a combined macro- and microanalytic approach to intensive case studies.

Chaotic dynamics in autonomic nervous system activity of a patient during a psychotherapy session

Chaos theory and nonlinear dynamical modeling have been applied successfully in a variety of scientific fields ranging from the physical sciences to population biology. More recently, investigators have modeled long-term psychological processes by applying this paradigm to subjective measures. Yet, mathematically rigorous dynamical modeling of transient psychodynamic processes remains uncharted. Human behaviors and intrapsychic processes often defy prediction, yet psychodynamic theory views these as fundamentally deterministic. We postulate that a nonlinear dynamical analysis of mental states and mental control processes may help reconcile the paradox that seemingly random mental states are thought ultimately to result from deterministic, rather than stochastic, psychological processes. As an initial empirical approach, we examined spontaneously occurring autonomic activity of a patient during 1 hr of psychotherapy and illustrate that cardiac responses associated with psychologically meaningful events possess nonlinear characteristics indicative of chaos. Such nonlinear analyses may shed light on fundamental issues of psychological functioning.

Psychophysiological processes during insight-oriented therapy : further investigations into nonlinear psychodynamics

Experimental evidence shows that many physiological processes abide by nonlinear dynamics and evidence chaos. Novel conceptual models postulate chaotic phenomena in psychological processes as well. The challenge in empirically testing these models is to develop measures that are sufficiently precise to permit nonlinear dynamical analyses and that also say something meaningful about psychological phenomena. Toward this end, we examined the spontaneously occurring autonomic activity of a patient during psychotherapy. Phase portraits were constructed of the patients heart rate data for each of several therapy sessions. The flows within these phase spaces were visually segmented and assigned to one of four previously defined trajectory classifications. These trajectories were quantitatively analyzed, and the corresponding clinical material was assessed qualitatively. The trajectories in the physiological phase space were recognizable, recurrent, and robust; they appeared coupled to ongoing psychological processes. Possible refinements in this typology are discussed and suggestions are made for potentially using such analyses to track and navigate among psychophysiological states.

Nonlinear analysis of autonomic responses in a therapist during psychotherapy.

An experienced, analytically trained psychotherapist was physiologically monitored while conducting a 28-session exploratory psychotherapy with a patient suffering a pathological grief reaction. The therapists autonomic responses, as manifested by perturbations in heart rate, were subjected to nonlinear dynamical analysis, yielding a series of characteristic “trajectories” representing the flow of these responses in time. We report interrater reliability and present descriptive statistics resulting from classifying these trajectories into four types. Interesting but preliminary clinical correlates of these autonomic trajectories were obtained by having the therapist review videotaped excerpts of the sessions and complete a self-report questionnaire. In conjunction with a previous report focusing on autonomic responses in the patient, this study further demonstrates the application of nonlinear dynamical methods to investigations of psychophysiology in the setting of psychotherapy, and perhaps in dyadic interactions more generally.

Analysis and visualization of complex psychophysiological data: Coordinated use of multiple applications on a microcomputer

Personal computers have become ubiquitous for data analysis and visualization. Complex analyses and visualizations of large data sets prove challenging for microcomputer environments and highlight a tradeoff between customized programming to enhance specificity and processing speed and the use of commercially available software packages. We frame this choice in terms of a continuum that exists from low-level programming languages to higher-level languages, and beyond this to object-oriented programming environments and other advanced software products; we argue that there is no sharp conceptual distinction between programming and not programming. In this light, we discuss the pros and cons of using several commercial software packages in concert on a single platform to facilitate complex research tasks and discuss the implications of this choice for innovative research.

Chaos in the heart: the interaction between body and mind

A number of factors influence the chaotic dynamics of heart function. Genetics, age, sex, disease, the environment, experience, and of course the mind, play roles in influencing cardiovascular dynamics. The mind is of particular interest because it is an emergent phenomenon of the body admittedly seated and co-occurrent in the brain. The brain serves as the bodys controller, and commands the heart through complex multipathway feedback loops. Structures deep within the brain, the hypothalamus and other centers in the brainstem, modulate heart function, partially as a result of afferent input from the body but also a result of higher mental processes. What can chaos in the body, i.e., the nonlinear dynamics of the heart, tell of the mind? This paper presents a brief overview of the spectral structure of heart rate activity followed by a summary of experimental results based on phase space analysis of data from semi-structured interviews. This paper then describes preliminary quantification of cardiovascular dynamics during different stressor conditions in an effort to apply more quantitative methods to clinical data.