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The authors describe a study of 295 psychoanalyses and 286 psychotherapies conducted and terminated by candidates at the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research of Columbia University. A large fund of information was collected and judged by graduate analysts at the beginning of treatment and at the end of the Clinic record, and by the treating analyst at termination for cases continuing beyond the candidates' graduation. Thirty-four patients and sixteen analyst characteristics were studied from three perspectives.
All groups of patients were judged to have achieved 'large' to 'very large' therapeutic benefit, psychoanalytic patients the greatest and psychosomatic patients the least, with much variation among psychoanalytic outcomes. Forty three per cent of those cases whose analyses terminated privately were judged to have developed an analytic process at termination, and these patients also achieved the highest level of therapeutic benefit. Psychoanalytic patients were assessed initially as functioning at higher levels than the psychotherapy patients, but in this highly selected sample the extent of therapeutic benefit or analysability could not be predicted from the inferences and data of initial assessment. Treatment length was associated with therapeutic benefit and analysability, but measures of the candidate's clinical ability and freedom from difficulty in training were not.