Two primary configurations of psychopathology and change in thought disorder in long-term intensive inpatient treatment of seriously disturbed young adults.

Abstract

Change in three types of thought disorder as measured by Rorschach responses (contaminations, confabulations, and fabulized combinations) were assessed during intensive, long-term, psychodynamically oriented inpatient treatment. Rorschach protocols for 90 seriously disturbed, treatment-resistant patients, 42 of whom were primarily preoccupied with primitive issues of interpersonal relatedness and used avoidant defenses (anaclitic patients) and 48 primarily preoccupied with primitive issues of self-definition and self-worth and used counteractive defenses (introjective patients), were evaluated at the beginning of treatment and, on average, 15 months into treatment. Change in anaclitic patients occurred primarily in more pathological forms of thought disorder (contaminations and confabulations) that express boundary disturbances; change in introjective patients occurred primarily in the less disturbed thought disorder (fabulized combinations) that expresses tendencies toward referential thinking. Seriously disturbed anaclitic and introjective patients expressed therapeutic progress in different but theoretically consistent ways.