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In many areas of the health-care professions there is a real gap between science and practice. For far too long, in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy this gap has been the broadest. In point of fact, it has been considered unbridgeable by many readers of this journal, though others feel the gap can be bridged (Luyten, Blatt, and Corveleyn 2006). A major aim of this review essay on Raymond Levy and Stuart Ablon's Hand book of Evidence-Based Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Bridging the Gap between Science and Practice is to help create a conduit for psychoanalytic and psychodynamic clinicians to use in navigating the world of systematic empirical research.
As Glen Gabbard states in his foreword to the book, “We are fortunate to have this volume and the comprehensive perspective it provides on the current state of the art in psychodynamic psychotherapy research” (p. ix). And, as the volume's editors note, “Sound empirical research has the potential to affirm the important role that psychodynamic theory and treatment have in modern psychiatry and psychology.” They also stress the important “role that systematic empirical investigations can have in developing and refining effective approaches to a variety of clinical problems” (p. xi). In this essay I highlight the areas of empirical research covered by this volume and address additional areas clinicians need to consider.
JAPA readers should note that more and more psychodynamic studies are being published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, that is, widely read journals, articles from which are heavily cited elsewhere. Several items published after the book under review was in press are important to highlight in this regard. In 2008 the Journal of the American Medical Association