The Qualified Pronoun Count as a Measure of Change in Family Psychotherapy

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the original Multiple Family Psychotherapy group at Georgetown University, Department of Psychiatry. The author, a clinician, used the technique of content analysis of recorded interviews and developed a “change ratio” which is called the “qualified pronoun count.” Although “therapeutic improvement” is not the main goal of the treatment strategy under research here, ordinarily anyone that exhibits the kind of change in differentiation from “family ego mass” ( 1 ) reflected in this study, also experiences diminution or remission of symptoms. Preliminary findings indicate this new system of observing change is useful in determining variations in differentiation, and that these families did change.