PRIVATE THEORIES AND PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUE

That if real success is to attend the effort to bring a man to a definite position, one must first of all take pains to find him where he is and begin there. This is the secret of the art of helping others (Kierkegaard [] 1962, p.?27)

The aim of this study is to explore the importance, to the therapeutic process, of the relation between the patient's and the therapist's problem formulations and private theories of pathogenesis and cure. Four cases of young adults in psychoanalytic psychotherapy were compared, two with unequivocally positive and two with more ambiguous outcome at termination. The patients and therapists were interviewed about their private theories initially and at termination of therapy, and a qualitative comparison was made between the cases. In the two more successful cases the therapists had early in therapy perceived obstacles for the therapeutic work in the patients' ways of thinking, feeling, and relating, and made interpretative interventions focusing on these. This was not observed in the less successful cases. In the more successful cases the patient's and the therapist's private theories were more similar at termination than initially, whereas the opposite development was found in the less successful cases. One hypotheses generated is that the therapeutic process can be facilitated by a therapist listening to the patient's private theories, making interpretative interventions focusing on obstacles to the therapeutic work, including contradictions between their private theories, and monitoring the patient's reactions to these interventions.     

Imprinting, Conditioning, and Within-event Learning

Three experiments investigated whether or not the temporal relationship between the visual (V) and auditory (A) components of an imprinting stimulus influenced the acquisition of a visual preference in domestic chicks (Gallus gallus domesticus). In Experiments 1a and 1b, chicks given simultaneous presentations of V and A showed a more marked tendency to approach V than those given sequential exposure to V and A. In Experiments 2 and 3, chicks received exposure to two visual stimuli, V1 and V2. During training, presentations of V1 preceded, followed, or were separated by 30 sec from presentations of a simultaneous compound comprising V2 and A. Chicks in each condition subsequently showed an equivalent preference to approach V2 rather than V1. These results show that filial imprinting, unlike Pavlovian conditioning but like within-event learning, proceeds most readily when training involves the simultaneous presentation of stimuli.