Quality Assurance and Quality Assessment as Integral Ongoing Aspects of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy1

Quality assurance aims to give an objective measurement of results or products against standards defined beforehand. In medical health care standards are discussed in terms of structure, process and result. In psychoanalysis and long term psychotherapy structure first of all refers to the competence of the therapist and the efforts made to maintain this comptetence. Parameters reflecting the process are discussed with reference to 1. The way in which the patient takes contact or is referred to the analyst and the way the analyst selects patients; 2. The way in which the analyst initiates and conducts treatments with special reference to the setting; 3. the way in which transference and counter-transference develops, i.e. the psychoanalytic process, and 4. the way in which treatments are terminated or interupted. Result refers to the general outcome of the practice and in which way it fulfills its own aims, i.e. that psychoanalytical processes are initiated and conducted. The parameters identified under each heading are documented and three types of reports are discussed, internal revision, external revision and general report.