Research – MindSense

A new dawn for psychoanalysis interpretation

Our innovative research approach provides meaningful and objective coding of psychotherapy session transcripts. It is particularly suited for capturing the core therapeutic phenomenon with micro-level assessments throughout treatment sessions while taking into account both the patient and the therapist processes individually, as well as the interaction between them. Thus, it enables to disentangle an amorphic psychodynamic therapy session into its most fundamental building blocks and quantitatively assess them, moment-by-moment.

The need

A major aim of psychotherapy research is to characterize the underlying mechanisms of successful interventions. However, this aim is far from being reached, owing to the immense complexity of the therapeutic processes and lack of appropriate multi-factor measurements. Thus, psychotherapy research is in a need of a non-dogmatic, multifaceted model that successfully incorporates the knowledge obtained from the many existing theories and empiric findings in the field.

Our goal

We believe that our approach could be profoundly useful in understanding the complex interactions within psychotherapy sessions, paving the way for much more efficient and cost-effective treatments. By incorporating clinical and theoretical knowledge with state-of-the-art methodology, we can bring psychotherapy research into contemporary standards.

Published Work

The MATRIX: a novel tool for organizing and analyzing psychodynamic Psychotherapy - In press

In press Bar, M., Saad, A., Gour, T., Wairauch, Y., Yalon, S., Lavon, H., Saad, S. & Mendlovic, S. (in press). The MATRIX: a novel tool for organizing and analyzing psychodynamic Psychotherapy. Dialog - the Israel Journal of Psychotherapy

Patient-therapist congruent exchanges engaged with the potential-to-experience is associated with better outcome of psychotherapy - April 2020

Bar, M., Saad, A., Slonim-Atzil, D., Tuval-Mashiach, R., Gour, T., Baron, N., Mendlovic, S. (2020). Patient-therapist congruent exchanges engaged with the potential-to-experience is associated with better outcome of psychotherapy. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice

Processes in Psychotherapy and the MATRIX: The Case of Projective Identification - September 2018

Mendlovic, S., Ben Yehuda, A., Saad, A., Sopher, A., & Doron, A. (2018). Processes in Psychotherapy and the MATRIX: The Case of Projective Identification. Psychodynamic psychiatry, 46(3), 393-410.

The Association between Patient–Therapist MATRIX Congruence and Treatment Outcome - March 2018

Mendlovic, S., Saad, A., Roll, U., Ben Yehuda, A., Tuval-Mashiah, R., & Atzil-Slonim, D. (2018). The association between patient–therapist MATRIX congruence and treatment outcome. Psychotherapy Research, 1-12.

The MATRIX, a Novel Tool Exploring Dynamic Psychotherapy: Preliminary Psychometric Properties - December 2017

Mendlovic, S., Doron, A., Saad, A., Atzil-Slonim, D., Saed, M. I., Bloch, Y., & Yehuda, A. B. (2017). The MATRIX, a novel tool exploring dynamic psychotherapy: Preliminary psychometric properties. Psychiatry research, 258, 344-350.

MATRIX: Space, Content, Order in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy - October 2015

Mendlovic, S., Doron, A., Ben Yehuda, A., Saad, A., & Mrei, S. (2015). MATRIX: Space, content, order in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Psychotherapy Research, Paper presented at, Klagenfort, Austria.

Space, Content, Order in the World of the Multiple Selves - 2015

Mendlovic, S. Space, Content, Order and the World of the Multiple Selves (2015). Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press.

On the Social Order of the Multiple Selves: Towards a Post-post-modern Psychoanalysis - 2009

Mendlovic, S. On the Social Order of the Multiple Selves: Towards a Post-post-modern Psychoanalysis. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2009