In this study we used a quasiexperimental, cross-sectional design with six cohorts differing in phase of treatment (pretreatment, posttreatment, 2-year posttreatment) and treatment type (psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy) and investigated scores on 39 Rorschach-CS variables. The total sample consisted of 176 participants from four mental health care organizations in The Netherlands. We first examined pretreatment differences between patients entering psychoanalysis and patients entering psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The two treatment groups did not seem to differ substantially before treatment, with the exception of the level of ideational problems. Next, we studied the outcome of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy by comparing the Rorschach-CS scores of the six groups of patients. In general, we found significant differences between pretreatment and posttreatment on a relatively small number of Rorschach-CS variables. More pre/post differences were found between the psychoanalytic psychotherapy groups than between the psychoanalysis groups. More research is needed to examine whether analyzing clusters of variables might reveal other results.
