Three groups of patients (N = 30) distributed as well as possible according to indication among standard psychoanalytic therapy, analytic group therapy and dynamic psychotherapy were submitted to testing in order to investigate the risk indices for stress factors (Dührssen) and to factor analysis with the aid of the Freiburg Personality Inventory, the Giessen-Test, and the Extended Giessen Complaint Sheet. A fourth group of Patients (N = 30), originally assigned to group therapy but having discontinued treatment, was used as control group. It was found that among patients assigned to any of these types of therapy the stress index was significantly higher than among patients seeing the physician for merely an initial examination and the taking of their case histories. Furthermore, the different groups showed different indices for stress factors: Patients in dynamic psychotherapy had by far the highest index of stress, followed by the patients who had discontinued group therapy. Group therapy patients who completed their treatment had again a slightly higher risk index than those who had been assigned to standard psychoanalytic therapy. Application of the above mentioned tests or complaint sheets revealed significant differences between the specific groups. But therapy also resulted in significant improvement of isolated aspects. An investigation concerned with the number of days of hospitalization and the number of days of disablement in a randomly selected group of patients in 1977 showed a statistically significant reduction of these numbers in the five-year period following therapy when compared to the last five years prior to therapy. On the whole the investigation has made it apparent that any comparative psychotherapy study is more or less futile when the patients under observation are parallelized merely according to age, sex, and symptoms while the respective risk indices with the accompanying stress factors in childhood and adolescence are being neglected.
