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The intention of conducting collaborative multidisciplinary research on records of psychotherapy imposes many potentially incompatible constraints. At the core lies the challenge of segmenting materials into units suitable for very different research methods while nevertheless ensuring comparison and convergence of results across a diverse array of measures. We examine issues of segmentation, present a coordinated system based on segmentation of psychotherapy transcripts by communicated meaning, and describe applications of the approach. Introduction: The Problem of Segmentation and Multunethod AnalysesCollaborative, multimethod research is needed to address many research questions (Brewer & Hunter, 1989;Murray, 1963) and is an important trend in psychotherapy research (Russell, 1987). But measures of relevant constructs are usually applied to different units (Kiesler, 1973). Even though it may be generally agreed that thematic content-what is communicated in therapy-is centrally important, coordinating various methods and measures has always been a sticky problem.

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Pathological mourning is such an excessive, blocked, or distorted process that psychiatric signs and symptoms develop. Explanation of how and why these signs and symptoms form could deepen an understanding of both normal and pathological mourning. Because many variables are involved in such explanations, intensive case study is a desirable methodology because it permits a detailed look at how various factors interact (Brewer and Hunter 1989; Luborsky and Mintz 1972; Luborsky and Spence 1971; Nessleroade and Ford 1985). While a patient may complain of symptoms as experiences that endure or occur episodically over days and weeks, a clinician observes psychiatric signs in the here-and-now seconds and minutes of an interview. Relating signs and symptoms to each other and to other variables in order to form a theoretical model of their formation requires exploration of data across long and short time frames. It is important to understand how the here-and-now phenomena combine to form patterns across longer periods of the individual's life. Hence, we developed a combined macro- and microanalytic approach to intensive case studies.

This single-case study examined frank disclosure of important topics in a brief exploratory psychotherapy, including topics closely related to a recent, unintegrated stressor life event. Quantitative measures of emotion and control variables showed heightened levels of both emotionally and defensive control during discourse on the topic of the stressor event. In future studies, such measures of verbal and nonverbal signs of emotional expression and defensive control might be used to identify topics in an unresolved state.