The Scientific Legacy of Bernard Maskit’s Work for Psychotherapy Practice and Research

TL;DR

Bernard Maskit's work in computerized linguistic analysis has advanced psychotherapy research and supported Bucci's theory of emotional communication and change.

Contribution

Maskit's transdisciplinary approach and tools for analyzing emotional communication offer new ways to bridge theory and clinical practice.

Findings

Maskit's work supports empirical validation of Bucci's multiple code theory.

His tools enable graphical representation of emotional and linguistic communication.

The Time-Discourse Attribute Analysis Program shows promise for future research and clinical use.

Abstract

Bernard Maskit’s work in developing computerized linguistic measures of the referential process has significantly advanced one of the most promising fields of psychotherapy research. His contributions offer the potential for empirical confirmation of the hypotheses contained in Wilma Bucci’s multiple code theory, a general theory of information processing, emotional communication, and psychotherapeutic change. Three key aspects of Maskit’s work yielded rich results for the purposes of both research and clinical practice are highlighted and described: (a) a truly transdisciplinary approach, characterized by the creation of conceptual and operational devices that do not belong to any of the disciplines potentially involved but are instead placed in a third terrain responding to broader, transversal knowledge problems; (b) the ability to develop graphic and formal ways of representing elusive aspects of emotional and linguistic communication, facilitating connections between theory and clinical data, and between clinicians and researchers; and (c) the capacity for a very functional intersubjective connection with Wilma Bucci, his scientific partner and wife, which created a productive new space intertwining psychology and mathematics. Lastly, the future development of Maskit’s work is outlined for the next generation of clinicians and researchers. One of these is the development of the Time-Discourse Attribute Analysis Program, the most current version of the computerized program that applies linguistic measures to texts, which Maskit worked on in his final years. This program must be finalized and validated for its potential heuristic value in both research and clinical practice.

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