The threefold purpose of this paper is to highlight the past accomplishments and survey the present reality of psychoanalytic process research, and to assess the future prospects for empirical research in this field. An overview of the major results of our own interdisciplinary approach to psychoanalytic process research, with abundant pointers to the literature where more detailed accounts can be found, fulfills the first purpose. The second is achieved with a brief, roughly chronological survey of sites in the United States where efforts have been made in the second half of the century to establish settings in which psychoanalytic process research could flourish. A comparison is made between the prevailing model for psychoanalytic research in this country and a substantially different model at the University of Ulm in Germany. We conclude with a discussion of the difficulties and rewards that await anyone interested in pursuing a serious, scientific investigation into the psychoanalytic process.