Preliminary Findings: An Anglo‐Swedish Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Outcome Study using PORT and DMT

Abstract

Historically, professionals did not consider that people with learning disabilities could make use of psychoanalytic psychotherapy because of limitations of intelligence (Symington, 1981; Symington, 1993; Sternlicht, 1965). Additionally, many believed that people with learning disabilities enjoyed immunity from emotional stress and psychiatric disturbances (Fletcher, 1993). Maladaptive behaviours were perceived as a manifestation of the condition of learning disability and not as a possible sign of psychiatric disorder or emotional problems. However, over the last decade there has been a growing realisation that people with learning disabilities have emotional problems in the same way as others, but are in some ways more vulnerable to developing psychiatric and psychological disturbances. Psychoanalytic practitioners wishing to undertake outcome research have experienced difficulties in finding a measuring device that understands the subtleties of change in the internal psychological structure over time. PORT and DMT (the Percept‐genetic Object Relation Test and the Defence Mechanism Test) are two projective tests that have been extensively validated in Sweden. This paper explores the use of the PORT and DMT outcome measures in the context of Anglo‐Swedish psychotherapy research.