Objectives: Does the subjective emotional experience of patients change in the course of psychoanalytic treatment?
Methods: Ten patients were interviewed four times during their first two years in psychoanalytic therapy. Interviews were coded with regard to the patients' subjective emotional experience. Changes in individual emotion profiles were then tested for associations with therapy outcome using a hierarchical linear model.
Results: Better therapy outcome was associated with an increase in emotional variability and a decrease in the proportion of negative emotions. In contrast, neither the number of emotions verbalized by the patients nor the frequencies of specific emotion categories were associated with therapy outcome.
Conclusions: Remarkable changes of emotional experience during the course of psychoanalytic treatment could be demonstrated. Particularly, a more variable emotional experience proved to be closely associated with improvement in mental health.