Outcome Research and the Future of Psychoanalysis explores the connection between outcome studies and important and complex questions of clinical practices, research methodologies, epistemology, and sociological considerations. Presenting the ideas and voices of leading experts in clinical and extra-clinical research in psychoanalysis, the book provides an overview of the state of the art of outcome research, its results and implications. Furthermore, its contributions discuss the basic premises and ideas of outcome research and in which way the contemporary Zeitgeist might shape the future of psychoanalysis. Divided into three parts, the book begins by discussing the scientific basis of psychoanalysis and advances in psychoanalytic thinking as well as the state of the art of psychoanalytic outcome research, critically analyzing so-called evidence-based therapies. Part II of the book contains exemplary research projects that are discussed from a clinical perspective, illustrating the dialogue between researchers and clinicians. Lastly, in Part III, several psychoanalysts review the importance of critical thinking and research in psychoanalytical education. Thought-provoking and expertly written and researched, this book is a useful resource for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of mental health, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis.

Is psychoanalysis in decline? Has its understanding of the human condition been marginalized? Have its clinical methods been eclipsed by more short-term, problem-oriented approaches? Is psychoanalysis unable (or unwilling) to address key contemporary issues and concerns? With contributors internationally recognized for their scholarship, Progress in Psychoanalysis: Envisioning the Future of the Profession offers both an analysis of how the culture of psychoanalysis has contributed to the profession’s current dilemmas and a description of the progressive trends taking form within the contemporary scene. Through a broad and rigorous examination of the psychoanalytic landscape, this book highlights the profession’s very real progress and describes a vision for its increased relevance. It shows how psychoanalysis can offer unparalleled value to the public. Economic, political, and cultural factors have contributed to the marginalization of psychoanalysis over the past 30 years. But the profession’s internal rigidity, divisiveness, and strong adherence to tradition have left it unable to adapt to change and to innovate in the ways needed to remain relevant. The contributors to this book are prominent practitioners, theoreticians, researchers, and educators who offer cogent analysis of the culture of psychoanalysis and show how the profession’s foundation can be strengthened by building on the three pillars of openness, integration, and accountability. This book is designed to help readers develop a clearer vision of a vital, engaged, contemporary psychoanalysis. The varied contributions to Progress in Psychoanalysis exemplify how the profession can change to better promote and build on the very real progress that is occurring in theory, research, training, and the many applications of psychoanalysis. They offer a roadmap for how the profession can begin to reclaim its leadership in wide-ranging efforts to explore the dynamics of mental life. Readers will come away with more confidence in psychoanalysis as an innovative enterprise and more excitement about how they can contribute to its growth.

Description of Content: Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Training Around the World; The Mental Health Professions: Conceptualization & Re-conceptualization of a New Discipline; Assessment of Structural Change in Psychoanalytic Therapy & Research; Outcomes of Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy at Termination and at Follow-up; Psychoanalysis as a Science: its Present Status & Future Tasks; Psychoanalysis & Academic Psychiatry--Bridges; The Future of Psychoanalysis; Identity of Psychoanalysis; Question of Lay Analysis; Reality & its Attributes as Psychoanalytic Concepts; Historical Overview; Maintenance of Psychoanalytic Identity & Functioning in a World in Flux; Psychoanalysis in Nazi Germany: Historical & Psychoanalytic Lessons

This book offers different theoretical approaches about what clinical research is. Clinical Research in Psychoanalysis is a unique contribution to the attempts to bridge the gap between clinicians and researchers and to create a culture of a more rigorous and systematic inquiry. It provides an innovative experience because for the first time different methods and perspectives were used to analyse one same clinical material. This was done by analysts from different working parties of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), from a range of different schools of psychoanalytic thought. This allows the reader to have a vision of the different methods that are currently being used by some working parties of the IPA and to learn about the strengths of each one for certain situations and types of research. This book revaluates clinical research, intending to make links between the analysts working through the working parties and the different ways of thinking in clinical research. By covering key topics, such as how working parties can facilitate different types of research; the place of metaphor in psychoanalytic research and practice; and the future for psychoanalytic research, this text is a fruitful dialogue between different theoretical conceptions and between clinicians and researchers, that will expand our perspectives on the evidence we find in clinical material and will broaden our views on the patient. This book offers a unique and invaluable experience to psychologists and psychoanalysts who are trying to improve their clinical practice and bring research evidence into their psychoanalytic practice. It is an invaluable contribution to psychoanalytic training of candidates, teachers, and students.

Clinical psychoanalysis rests on a large edifice of theory that has until recently been studied only in practice. Empirical research on the psychoanalytical process and efforts to determine the effects of treatment came late. Nonetheless, there is a significant group of investigators who have been laboring to understand how and if analysis works. Their efforts are summarized in this volume by the researchers themselves, who tell about their quest.

The Future of Psychoanalysis explores the contemporary problem of multiple theories of psychoanalysis and argues for a return to a more classical position based on Freud's work. Using his training in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and philosophy, Richard D. Chessick examines the special combination of hermeneutics and natural science that characterizes Freud's psychoanalysis, and investigates what goes on in the mind of the psychoanalyst during the psychoanalytic process. He maintains that while relativistic and intersubjective theories of psychoanalysis have value, they have gone too far and generated a plurality of theories removed from Freud, which has led to chaos in the field. The Future of Psychoanalysis challenges these trends and places this debate in the context of current mind/brain controversies and unresolved questions about human nature.

Hartvig Dahl This is a book about the future that we hope will arouse the curiosity of clinicians and point a direction for researchers. It marks the surprisingly rapid evolution of psychodynamic psychotherapy research from an applied toward a basic science, and, as its title implies, describes strategies to follow rather than results to live by. It was not always thus. A quarter of a century ago the editors of two volumes of psychotherapy research reports summarized the state of the field then: Although there has been a great accumulation of clinical observations and experimental findings, the field has made relatively little progress. There has been little creative building on the work of others (Parloff and Rubinstein 1962). Psychological research generally has tended to be insuffi ciently additive. Research people often find it hard to keep informed of related work done on the same site and else where, and therefore do not build upon each other's foun dation (Luborsky and Strupp 1962).

A crisis in psychoanalysis has been developing since the 1970s, manifesting in a gradual but persistent loss of patients and young mental health providers in psychoanalytic training and therapy. In a peculiar way, the Freudian informative theory of psychoanalysis has been going through a parallel crisis of its own. There have been internal disagreements and differences among analysts about how to develop the theory and protect the profession of psychoanalysis. The internal disputes have resulted in chaotic theoretical plurality, which replaced classical informative theory. In spite of obvious and serious concerns about these crises, none of the solutions has been useful. Future Psychoanalysis: Toward a Psychology of the Human Subject focuses on the future of psychoanalysis considering its current critical condition. The informative theory of psychoanalysis has reached its limits, but its structural base offers a comprehensive theory, promising fruitful future psychoanalysis. It is a theory of the structural foundation of the intrapsychical core of the human subject. Since the human sciences are currently adopting the structural outlook in their fields of research, psychoanalysis could join the humanities as one of its fields, not just as a clinical profession that is parasitically linked to the more active idiographic fields of epistemology. Future Psychoanalysis introduces a structural theory of psychoanalysis to replace the demising informative theory and points to where future psychoanalysis will thrive.

An Evidence-Based Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis assesses the state of psychoanalysis in the 21st century. Joel Paris examines areas where analysis needs to develop a stronger scientific and clinical base, and to integrate its ideas with modern clinical psychology and psychiatry. While psychoanalysis has declined as an independent discipline, it continues to play a major role in clinical thought. Paris explores the extent to which analysis has gained support from recent empirical research. He argues that it could revive its influence by establishing a stronger relationship to science, whilst looking at the state of current research. For clinical applications, he suggests while convincing evidence is lacking to support long-term treatment, brief psychoanalytic therapy, lasting for a few months, has been shown to be relatively effective for common mental disorders. For theory, Paris reviews changes in the psychoanalytic paradigm, most particularly the shift from a theory based largely on intrapsychic mechanisms to the more interpersonal approach of attachment theory. He also reviews the interfaces between psychoanalysis and other disciplines, ranging from "neuropsychoanalysis" to the incorporation of analytic theory into post-modern models popular in the humanities. An Evidence-Based Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis concludes by examining the legacy of psychoanalysis and making recommendations for integration into broader psychological theory and psychotherapy. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and scholars and practitioners across the mental health professions interested in the future and influence of the field.