Measurement of Electrical Skin Resistance during Interviews

Abstract

Previous investigators have shown that the level of a patient's electrical skin resistance before and after a psychotherapeutic interview is related to the content of the interview (4, 5). Their findings make it reasonable to expect that changes in skin resistance within an interview will throw some light on the nature of the moment-to-moment interaction between patient and therapist. The present paper describes the development of apparatus for making continuous measurements of skin resistance during therapeutic interviews. ELECTRODES In attempting to measure skin resistance continuously, we soon discovered that none of the commercially available electrode-holders is satisfactory, because every electrode-holder is made so that it either fails to maintain firm contact with the skin or causes the patient so much discomfort that the psychotherapy is disrupted. Thus, we found it necessary to design one. Our electrode-holder, constructed as shown in Fig. 1, keeps the electrodes in firm contact with the skin. At first we made the electrode-holder of Bake