Draft:David Liberman Algorithm

The David Liberman Algorithm (DLA) is a research method in psychoanalysis developed by David Maldavsky (see biography in the link below). It’s constituted by a series of instruments designed to detect wishes (derived from the drives, as Freud categorized them) and defenses. The name of the method is in the honor of the Argentinian psychoanalist David Liberman to wich Maldavsky recognizes a disciple. The method has been developed to study the wishes and defenses in the analysis of verbal and non-verbal manifestations. In the verbal manifestations the DLA is provided of instruments to study three levels of analysis. Technical Specifications [edit] The method was developed to study the wishes and defenses in the analysis of the verbal and non-verbal manifestations. In the verbal manifestations the DLA is provided of instruments to study three levels of analysis: • narrations • speech acts • word The narrations allow to study the wishes and defenses in the daily living scenes of the patient, and are analized as a cluster of narrative sequences, constituted by scenes. This analysis allows to detect conflictive situations of the patient and his ways of resolving them in his current or historical daily life. The speech acts allow to study the wishes and defenses in the scenes that the patient spreads in session or interview by the fact of speaking, wich could or couldn’t be the same as those expressed in the narrated scenes. This analysis allows to detect the relations that are given between patient and therapist.

The words allow to detect the wishes expressed in a microscopic level, wich could or couldn’t be coincident with the ones detected in the narrated or spreaded scenes. This analysis allows to detect also those wishes that the patient hadn’t achieve to develop as related or spreaded scenes For each of these levels of analysis it exists, also, frequency distributions of the wishes in the speech acts and words of the therapist and patient, and in the narrations for patients. Other DLA instruments allow to study the same Concepts (wish, defense and it’s state) in the motor and visual imaginery components, both in the iconic and plastic aspects. In the development of the different instruments of the method, in addition to the influence of David Liberman, could be mentioned the influence of Greimas, in the analysis of narrations and motor skills, the influence of Searles in the analysis of the speech acts, and the influence of grupo µ in the analysis of the iconic and plastic components of the visual sign With these instruments it has been realizad different researchs, presented in the International congresses of the Society for Psychotherapy Research and the International Psycho-Analytic Association, published in books and journals and developed in academic thesis of Masters and Doctorates, with authors from Brasil, Ecuador, Mexico and Argentina. Often in these researchs it resuslts posible to apply various of the DLA instruments, wich allows those to have more refinament and depth.