The Self-Relatedness Construct: Empirical Verification via Observation in the Context of Inpatient Group Therapy

Abstract

The article outlines the empirical verification of a self-relatedness construct theoretically elaborated elsewhere for its suitability as a way of describing changes achieved in the framework of inpatient psychotherapy. The study centres on two hypotheses: (1) during inpatient therapy lasting 12 weeks, patients display identifiable changes in the form of an increase in self-referentiality; (2) an increase in self-referentiality correlates with a decrease in symptomatology. The study was conducted in a practice-near design involving 76 patients in the framework of a multi-level approach. The article presents the findings gained with newly devised instruments for the identification of features of (a) self-relatedness and (b) of symptomatology and the experience of illness. First, it was again possible to show that these instruments satisfy various quality criteria. Of the two hypotheses, the first may safely be said to stand confirmed. Assessment of the second hypothesis calls for a differentiation regarding the increase of self-referentiality and symptom change in that this increase differs according to symptom area: whereas the increase of self-referentiality is bound up with a reduction of somatic and social symptoms, there is no demonstrable connection of this kind with regard to psychic symptoms, although the individual scales also show a reduction. The findings are interpreted with all due caution as indicating that the new instruments may have touched on, or indeed identified, a `capacity for symbolization `factor underlying both structure formation and symptomatology.