Change in Each Patient Variable from Initial to Termination

Abstract

In this chapter the fate of each patient variable will be traced and clarified. The basic data are individual statements about each variable made by the research testers solely on the basis of their reading of the tests. We went over these statements and abstracted from them statements of presence or absence of the variable, increase or decrease in the variable, change for the better or change for the worse in the variable. Until this book was completed, we had no knowledge of the patient other than what we got from reading the test write-ups. While the objective in this portion of the study was to study each variable singly, the compellingness of patterns and relationships led at various points to at least rudimentary connections between one variable and another. This was partly due to the essential artificiality, if not impossibility, of rigidly restricting clinical thinking, which is characteristically based upon correlations and patterns, and partly because of the overlapping nature of many of the variables themselves. Thus, for example, in writing about the variable patterning of defenses, it was difficult to avoid commenting upon other variables such as ego strength, affect organization, thought organization, and alloplasticity—all intimately related to patterning of defenses. These interrelationships are demonstrated later by intercorrelation figures.