This dataset contains the R code for the analysis and results of the study "Exploring Gender differences with Natural Language Processing: Language characteristics of male and female patients in psychodynamic psychotherapy". Furthermore, it contains the transcription rules.

Introduction: To improve psychotherapeutic treatment, gender differences regarding psychological processes in psychotherapy need to be understood. As language is the basis for communication and the relationship between patient and psychotherapist, the impact of gender on psychotherapeutic treatment can be investigated through the analysis of language patterns of male and female patients in psychotherapy sessions.

Methods: For this retrospective, exploratory study 250 psychotherapy sessions of 125 patients treated at a psychodynamic psychotherapy institute were verbatim transcribed. The psychodynamic psychotherapies took place at the Heidelberg Institute for Psychotherapy (HIP). Using computational methods of Natural Language Processing, different language parameters were extracted from these transcripts and language differences between male and female patients were analysed.

Results: We were able to identify several gender differences: Male patients showed a higher lexical verbosity, used longer words and more nouns and adjectives than female patients. Moreover, in sessions with male patients, interruptions occurred more often. In comparison, female patients spoke words that refer to their mother more often and also used terms of endearment to talk about their parents. Additionally, they used personal pronouns and first-person plural pronouns more frequently than male patients. No significant gender difference was found for word count, simultaneous speaking and insertions.

Discussion: Our study demonstrated that gender impacts language patterns in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Male patients use a more complex, formal and directive language, while the language of female patients indicates more emotional proximity, especially in relationships. Our results serve as a first account of gender-specific language characteristics in psychotherapy.