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There have long been discussions within psychoanalytic psychotherapy circles, about how and whether to research and evidence our work: should it be done? Can it be done? Will psychoanalytic psychotherapy have a future without such evidencing? In our own field, we have therapists/authors such as Nick Midgley who have long grappled with this question, collecting evidence in books and articles (e.g., Midgley et al., 2017), or setting up large randomised controlled trials (RCTs), such as the Improving Mood with Psychoanalytic and Cognitive Therapies (IMPACT) study (see Goodyer et al., 2017). Implicit within this line of research - notwithstanding the qualitative smaller studies ‘nested’ within the larger RCTs - is the idea that we as psychotherapists need to become familiar
with quantitative research. Similarly to the ‘publish or perish’ ethos in academia, here the call for our profession seems to be ‘get involved in “proper” research or perish’.
Yet a tradition of qualitative research has long existed (and flourished) alongside quantitative methods, and it is within that larger field that Joshua Holmes’ research ideas, outlined in this excellent book, are positioned. The central theme of the book is the intriguing psychoanalytic concept of reverie, and it was in the spirit of reverie - mysterious and hard to grasp as the term is - that I tried as a reader to approach this book, allowing my own thoughts and associations to unfold as I was reading. Holmes here outlines what he calls the ‘Reverie Research Method’, a paradox perhaps in terms, as how can it be that our reverie process - as human beings, researchers, therapists - be included, and even underlined, in what is supposed to be a scientific research method? Many of these questions are explored here in some depth - e.g., - is ‘a research method possible that stays true to clinical realities’ (p. 2); or ‘why, given its technical complexity and methodological problematics, is it important to look inwardly (“practic