Grady, Jacqueline, Dean, Suzanne ORCID: 0000-0003-0355-2727, Godfrey, Celia, Beaufoy, Jeanette, Pullen, Jill, Smale, Sarina, Hill, Christine, Ivey, Gavin ORCID: 0000-0002-5537-3504 and Tonge, Bruce ORCID: 0000-0002-4236-9688 (2023) The Melbourne Study of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy II: Patients' and psychotherapists' perspectives on expectations, therapeutic experience and benefits. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 20 (4). pp. 573-595. ISSN 1742-3341

Abstract

The naturalistic, longitudinal Melbourne Study of Psycho-analytic Psychotherapy was conducted in a subsidized community clinic established by the Victorian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists as a demonstration project operating over 8years. It offered lower SES adults twice-weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy for 2years. An independent research program used the RE-AIM planning and evaluation framework to investigate the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance of the service. Complementary quantitative and qualitative methodologies studied mental health and general-life functioning outcomes and underlying processes of treatment. Two papers pres-ent the qualitative arm of the research, exploring the lived experience of the psychotherapy, reported contemporane-ously and retrospectively by patients and psychotherapists. This first paper details the qualitative design and methods employed. In-depth semi-structured narrative interviews during psychotherapy, upon completion at 2years, and at an additional 8-month follow-up point for patients, were conducted. Analysis of the narrative transcripts of 143 participant interviews revealed themes regarding patient expectations of treatment and the perceptions of both patients and psychotherapists of the long-term psychoana-lytic psychotherapy experience and its benefits. Narratives thus provided evidence of the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance of the service. The findings enrich understanding of the effective processes underlying the outcomes of the quantitative arm of the study reported separately. The second qualitative paper presents the find-ings concerning participants' experiences of facilitative and challenging aspects of the treatment, as well as the implica-tions of the qualitative findings overall.

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