title: Changes in defensive functioning in completed psychoanalyses: the penn psychoanalytic treatment collection.
abstract: Theory predicts that patients completing psychoanalysis should improve in their dynamic functioning. The aim of this naturalistic study is to examine whether a sample of 17 subjects from the Penn Psychoanalytic Treatment Collection with completed, tape-recorded psychoanalyses demonstrated improvement in one dynamic aspect: their defense mechanisms. The pre-post effect size for the change in overall defensive functioning (ODF) of the sample was large (.76) and statistically significant (p = .01). The percentage of subjects who improved in their ODF (71%) was similar to that found by others who studied the same sample using general functioning measures. These findings provide the first empirical evidence to support a trait-like change in dynamic personality functioning in patients who have undergone psychoanalysis. Randomized controlled studies with homogeneous samples are needed to further confirm these findings.
authors.affiliation: McGill University Faculty of Medicine at the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, S.M.B.D. Jewish General Hospital. carmella.roy@mcgill.ca
authors.forename: Carmella A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Roy
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Perry
authors.forename: Lester
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Luborsky
authors.forename: Elisabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Banon
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D035843:Biomedical Research; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015588:Observer Variation; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results