Diagnosis: The Structure and Psychodynamics of Patients’ Inner Problems

Abstract

The demographic and standardized data recorded are external data and give us little help in understanding the patients’ inner dynamics. The patient’s history is the best source for a clear analysis and description of his conflicts and structure, of the meaning and significance of his symptoms. With all our information on 86 mostly well documented and analysed cases we hoped to find a broad empirical basis — regarding not only the heterogeneity of the structures and problems involved, but also the great variety of possible psychodynamic ramifications of a perverse symptom. An appropriate method had to be found to do this.