Kinetic Behavior in Altered Clinical States: Approach to Objective Analysis of Motor Behavior during Clinical Interviews

Abstract

This paper presents a scheme, derived both rationally and empirically, for the analysis of body movements occurring spontaneously in psychotherapeutic interviews. Focussing on hand movements, a distinction is made between two broad, conceptually different, and independent classes of movements: those accompanying speech (object-focussed), and those involving some form of self-stimulation but not speech-related (body-focussed). Furthermore, different kinds of object-focussed movements are identified according to their integration with and primacy vis-a-vis speech. Observations on two paranoid patients, each at two different points in his treatment, suggest that the coding scheme can reflect the patient's altered clinical states.