On the Continuing Evolution of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: Reflections and Predictions

Tufts’ Tenth Annual Symposium on Psychotherapy is a challenging opportunity to focus on the current status of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the light of its continuing evolution from its historic and conceptual roots. The theme of the Symposium, “Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: The Next Decade,” stimulates us to reflect upon some recent trends and to make some predictions for the immediate future.

We shall introduce our clinical and theoretical biases at the outset, in order to provide a clear context for our reflections and predictions.

We view psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and focal psychotherapy on a continuum and refer to them as “the psychoanalytic psychotherapies.” The justification for this view which we will offer here is both empirical and conceptual. The psychoanalytic psychotherapies are united into a common framework by the same personality theory, the same theory of psychopathology, the same theory of “cure,” and the same theory of technique. The difference that set them apart as more or less distinct modalities of treatment should not obscure the essential and more fundamental similarities. Our emphasis on the unity of the psychoanalytic psychotherapies and the continuum on which we see their three component treatment modalities does not mean that we wish to blur their differentiating characteristics. What differentiates psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and focal psychotherapy is the nature of the therapeutic process. The psychoanalyst or the psychotherapist aids the evolution of the process by responding interpretively to those experiences within each therapeutic situation which are crucial for the achievement of the therapeutic tasks in that particular treatment modality.

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