Assessing therapeutic process and changes in patient-therapist attachment with PQS and PTA Q-Sort

The aim of this paper is to investigate the fluctuations in patient-therapist attachment in different phases of psychoanalysis completely audiotaped and trascripted conducted by Merton Gill. In order to accomplish this goal, we have selected a sample of 32 sessions (4 every six months of analysis). Three independent raters will apply to these sessions the Patient-Therapist Attachment Q-sort (PTA-Qsort; De Bei, Lingiardi, Miccoli, 2008) and Psychotherapy Process Q-Sort (Jones, 2000). In line with previous results, we expect to find a progressive increase in patient-therapist attachment security during the analysis, with an intermediate phase with a decrease of the security and an increase in the final phase. We will also investigate the relations between attachment style and psychoanalytic process.