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Our profession and its reputation depend on the vital engagement between psychoanalytic practice and research. We believe that over the past 50 years clinical research has meaningfully aided practice, often in ways we take for granted. However, internecine battles and a lack of mutual understanding between researchers and clinicians have obscured the fact that many good clinicians are influenced by research. The newly constituted Division 39 Research Committee, in collaboration with D/R, has initiated this regular series with two related aims in mind: first, to show in practical terms how leading clinicians and researchers use important research findings to inform practice; and second, to take the engagement between psychoanalytic research and practice to the next level, where it can have a vital impact on our membership and our profession.
Our format for this series will be to interview prominent clinicians and researchers about the ways in which research findings have influenced their clinical work. Prior to the actual interview, we will ask our “subjects” which research findings have made a difference in how they work with patients, and if we are not familiar with the research we will review the findings. In the interview itself we will discuss why they thought these findings were important and how they affected their practices, with illustrative clinical vignettes. We will also ask our “subjects” for their reflections on and suggestions for the integration of research and practice.
We want to emphasize again that our goal will be to demonstrate that research has real clinical utility. We will focus not on the “truth” of these findings per se or even their place in the overall research canon, but rather on their usefulness-our major interest will be the subjective experience of the working psychoanalytic clinician. If ours is an “impossible profession,” then anything that helps and guides the clinician is of value.
Our first interview is with Dr. Nancy McWilliams. N