“Forschen und Heilen” in der Psychoanalyse Ergebnisse und Berichte aus Forschung und Praxis: [‘Research and healing’ in psychoanalysis. Results and reports from research and practice] By Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Bernhard Rüger, Ulrich Stuhr and Manfred Beutel Stuttgart:  Kohlhammer. 2002.  311 pp.

The scientism that has predominated for many decades, with its demand for a unified science on the model of physics, has also led to inappropriate research methods in psychotherapy research that were long considered compulsory. The requirement for a control group in the investigation of long-term therapies, for example, is one positivistic relic of this. In psychoanalytic therapies, it is above all the unconscious learning and relationship experiences between patient and psychoanalyst that take effect, alongside insights that have become conscious and corresponding changes in everyday life. The consequences of this are not immediately transformed into symptomatic or behavioural changes. They therefore cannot be grasped even by the patient's self-evaluations. Psychoanalysts have therefore been right to protect themselves from the inadequate methodological standards used in psychotherapy research. Occasionally, however, this has also led to the difficulties of efficacy research being considered insurmountable; in consequence, this judgement sometimes became an excuse for taking little or no further interest in research. The Freudian ‘precious conjunction’ of treatment and research has then had to serve to legitimise this lack. It is therefore a great service of the present work, compiled by three psychoanalytic researchers and a statistics professor, to embark on some new methodological paths.