The Capacity to Describe other People Clearly: A Predictor of Interpersonal Problems in Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy

One predictor of a patient's success in brief dynamic psychotherapy is the relative salience of interpersonal over noninterpersonal distress in the patient's initial self-reports. Study I tested the hypothesis that patients with more salient interpersonal distress are more likely to describe significant others clearly, a capacity that is relevant to the work of brief dynamic psychotherapy. Descriptions that patients had provided of their mothers and fathers during the initial evaluation interview were presented to naive undergraduate students, who recalled the descriptions and rated their clarity. The descriptions were judged to be clearer for patients with relatively greater interpersonal than noninterpersonal distress. An analysis of those recalls also revealed more consensually recalled content. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that patients with relatively greater interpersonal distress tend to become overly involved with other people, so their interpersonal problems reflect difficulties disengaging from other people (e.g., difficulties being assertive), whereas patients with relatively greater noninterpersonal distress tend to remain uninvolved, so their interpersonal problems more often reflect a reluctance to become involved in the first place. A circumplex model was used to characterize each patient's interpersonal problems, and the results supported these hypotheses. Further implications for treatment and research were discussed