The Language of Hidden Messages

A Study of the Patient’s Latent Communication About the Therapeutic Relationship

¹ Department of Psychology, Göteborg University, Göteborg, Sweden.

The patient in psychotherapy often communicates disguised impressions of the therapist. Certain mechanisms, such as displacement from the therapist to other persons and situations or identification with the therapist, contribute to disguising the communication. Among patients’ manifest stories about relationships, those selected by two independent raters as latent communications about the therapist contained more negative aspects and destructive interactions than those not selected. In the nonselected stories the patient and his or her relationships were portrayed more positively. This may be a clue as to how therapists make assessments of whether latent content about the therapist is present. They may view it as more likely to be present if the patient speaks of negative feelings in relationships.