Department of Pedogogy, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy.
Psychother Res. 2010 Sep;20(5):546-63. doi: 10.1080/10503301003641886.
The authors propose a method for analyzing the psychotherapy process: discourse flow analysis (DFA). DFA is a technique representing the verbal interaction between therapist and patient as a discourse network, aimed at measuring the therapist-patient discourse ability to generate new meanings through time. DFA assumes that the main function of psychotherapy is to produce semiotic novelty. DFA is applied to the verbatim transcript of the psychotherapy. It defines the main meanings active within the therapeutic discourse by means of the combined use of text analysis and statistical techniques. Subsequently, it represents the dynamic interconnections among these meanings in terms of a "discursive network." The dynamic and structural indexes of the discursive network have been shown to provide a valid representation of the patient-therapist communicative flow as well as an estimation of its clinical quality. Finally, a neural network is designed specifically to identify patterns of functioning of the discursive network and to verify the clinical validity of these patterns in terms of their association with specific phases of the psychotherapy process. An application of the DFA to a case of psychotherapy is provided to illustrate the method and the kinds of results it produces.
话语流程分析（DFA）。DFA 是一种将治疗师和患者之间的言语交互表示为话语网络的技术，旨在通过时间测量治疗师-患者话语生成新意义的能力。DFA 假设心理治疗的主要功能是产生符号新颖性。DFA 应用于心理治疗的逐字记录。它通过文本分析和统计技术的结合，定义了治疗话语中活跃的主要意义。随后，它以“话语网络”的形式表示这些意义之间的动态互联。话语网络的动态和结构指标已被证明能够有效地表示患者-治疗师的交流流程，并对其临床质量进行估计。最后，设计了一个神经网络，专门用于识别话语网络的功能模式，并根据其与心理治疗过程特定阶段的关联来验证这些模式的临床有效性。提供了一个 DFA 在心理治疗案例中的应用，以说明该方法及其产生的结果类型。
