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Clinicians who criticise psychodynamic research efforts often cite lack of relevance to the analytic endeavour and the loss of clinical richness that research necessitates as the basis for their criticisms. Analysts engaged in conducting psychoanalytic research know the challenges of developing rigorous methodology and defining what constitutes acceptable data when studying the complex process of psychoanalysis. There can be no doubt that the research presented in this volume is relevant to psychoanalysis. It provides a model example of a methodologically rigorous project that nonetheless retains the richness of the clinical endeavour. Clinicians and researchers alike will be happy to see the clear example of intriguing and important psychoanalytic research reported in Conscious and Unconscious Processes: Psychodynamic, Cognitive and Neurophysiological Convergences by Howard Shevrin et al. This book summarises the theoretical underpinnings, research methods, and findings of Shevrin and his colleagues' groundbreaking and innovative work over nearly forty years as they have attempted to provide objective evidence for the role of unconscious conflict in psychopathology.
The essence of the work described is as follows: patients with phobias (and others with pathological grief reactions, though these patients are not discussed in the book) were extensively interviewed using unstructured, exploratory psychodynamic interviews, psychological tests and psychiatric interviews to clarify DSM diagnosis. Transcripts of these interviews and test results were reviewed by judges who, through a complex series of steps, arrived at a psychodynamic formulation about each subject's core unconscious conflicts as they related to the presenting symptoms. The judges used their formulations to generate and hone a list of words that they believed closely related to the conscious symptoms of each patient as well as a list that related to that patient's unconscious conflicts. The lists w