Evaluation of psychotherapies and Osgood's Semantic Differential. A tentative approach.

Setting up a semantic differential according to Osgood for evaluating analytical psychotherapies: a selection of scales and inducive words plus a factor analysis based on answers obtained from two test groups--the one composed of ambulatory psychiatric patients, the other composed of normal individuals. Preliminary validity tests of the results for applicability in clinical situations: examples of individual semantic configurations reflecting in a plausible manner certain clinical characteristics; comparison of the configurations of a group of neurotics with those of a group of schizophrenics; example of the evolution of one configuration during the period of psychoanalytical treatment. These first tests led us to believe that the semantic differential could contribute effectively to the evaluation of psychotherapies.