Listening Better (and Hearing) through Psychotherapy Research

It is interesting that Leslie Murdin has entitled her paper The Future of the Transference-Based Therapies. It conveys a feeling that the debates about research into psychotherapy present some kind of fundamental threat to the future of these therapies, and this message continues throughout her paper. As she describes recent political and institutional developments around IAPT her misgivings are understandable (although her characterization of cognitive-behavioural therapy [CBT] as a ‘mechanical means’ to a quick cure is perhaps a little extreme). Are depression sufferers to be given short shrift as part of a government economic panic to get them back into employment? May a flood of new CBT workers ease other talking therapies out of the NHS? But as she goes on to locate the origins of this policy in some kind of general research-endorsing perspective (instead of merely in specific proposals emanating from certain political subgroups), we are encouraged to become ever more afraid of something which should be our ally, namely information about when our work succeeds, and when it fails to help people feel better, that is, better about the things for which they sought therapeutic help. I feel her anxiety needs tempering and, in responding, I will adopt a stance of cautious optimism that within the coming decade psychodynamic (transference-based) work will become increasingly accepted, despite the pessimism evinced by not only Murdin herself but many of our professional colleagues. There are two broad reasons for my sanguine outlook, one the nature of the issue and the accumulating evidence, the second the changes that have recently been taking place in public opinion and institutions about what can be permitted to count as evidence of therapeutic help.

Beginning with the second, it should be noted that over the last 18 months there has been an opening up of dialogue between groups whose different