Direct and Cross-Sectional Assessments of Emotional Distress in Married Couples

This experimental psychological study featured the perception and evaluation of emotional disorders in married couples. It revealed a systemic mutual influence of individual states and perceptual components of relationships, as well as their distortion. The research objective was to identify the characteristics of direct and cross-assessments of emotional disorders in married couples. The analysis involved the methodology of social psychology and gestalt therapy. Emotional states (disorders) were studied with the help of direct and crossassessments. Each of the spouses performed the techniques first for themselves (self-observation, direct assessment) and then for each other (cross-assessment), based on their observations, interaction experience, and interpersonal relations. The phenomenology of the perception of emotional states was described in terms of contact interruptions in gestalt therapy as isolation, confluence, expectation of confluence, projection, and contact. They correlated with six possible combinations of spouse’s evaluations. The levels of depression, anxiety, and asthenia in 44 married couples were subjected to BDI, HADS, and FIS techniques followed by correlation analysis. It resulted in a new method that correlated the system of received evaluations and the number of reliable and significant connections with psychological mechanisms of interruptions. The expression of mechanisms of social perception (interruptions) that affected the assessments of emotional state in married couples was as follows: 78% contact, 78% projection, 55% expectation of confluence, 22% confluence, 8% isolation. When objectivizing the individual assessment of emotional state, the 22% distortion has to be taken into account as a tendency to exaggerate the severity of symptoms in the partner. This interpretation model can be used for family psychodiagnostics, psychotherapy, and psychoprophylaxis.

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