Frank Auld

Alexithymia. The development of a valid and reliable projective measure (the objectively scored Archetypal9 Test).

The aim of this study was to examine whether the Archetypal9 Test (AT9) could meet the need for a valid and reliable test with which to measure the alexithymic trait cluster. Participants in this study included 61 patients drawn from pain clinics in Montreal (Royal Victoria Hospital) and Detroit (Henry Ford Hospital) and 30 patients undergoing minor surgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. All 91 subjects took both the AT9 Test and the Clarke Vocabulary Scale. The results of the attempts at validation reveal that the objectively scored AT9 Test (SAT9) is a highly internally consistent instrument, that it has demonstrated construct validity, and that it can significantly discriminate between patient groups (pain patients and medical patients). The SAT9 is positively related to age, inversely related to occupational level, and uncorrelated with IQ (as measured by the Clarke Vocabulary Scale). The authors concluded that thus far, the SAT9 has proven to be a valid instrument which can be used to measure a central feature of alexithymia.

Application of Guttman's Scaling Method to the T.A.T

3. Granting that a subject has the trait in question (some habit or motive), how can one assess its strength? In carrying out the research described in this paper, we had to give tentative answers to these questions. Our answer to the first question is embodied in the system of categories used in studying the T.-,4.T. stories of our subjects. Our answer to the second question is made evident by the procedure used in assigning scores to the T.,4.T. stories. Our answer to the third question is contained in the assumptions underlying the scaling procedures that we used. While our answers to the first two questions are not unique,

Measurement of motivational variables in psychotherapy

Among many psychoanalysts quantification has acquired a bad reputation. They think of quantification or measurement as a destruction of the meaningfulness of the therapeutic interaction, as an insensitivity to vital processes of therapy, as a rather stupid and arrogant use of numbers. One can understand why they feel this way; there have been many misguided attempts at measuring psychoanalytic concepts. But in these misguided attempts, the troubles arose not from quantification, but from the erroneous applications of analytic theory. For example, the easy assumption that repression can be equated with forgetting is just plain wrong; and whether an investigator making this erroneous assumption uses quantification or not is quite beside the point.

Measurement of Electrical Skin Resistance during Interviews

Previous investigators have shown that the level of a patients electrical skin resistance before and after a psychotherapeutic interview is related to the content of the interview (4, 5). Their findings make it reasonable to expect that changes in skin resistance within an interview will throw some light on the nature of the moment-to-moment interaction between patient and therapist. The present paper describes the development of apparatus for making continuous measurements of skin resistance during therapeutic interviews. ELECTRODES In attempting to measure skin resistance continuously, we soon discovered that none of the commercially available electrode-holders is satisfactory, because every electrode-holder is made so that it either fails to maintain firm contact with the skin or causes the patient so much discomfort that the psychotherapy is disrupted. Thus, we found it necessary to design one. Our electrode-holder, constructed as shown in Fig. 1, keeps the electrodes in firm contact with the skin. At first we made the electrode-holder of Bake