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Despite the many advances in psychiatry in this century and the greater medical and public interest in the field, there has been a lag in the development of scientific validation of the various methods of treatment currently employed. Increasingly in the past few years, efforts are being made to correct this situation, but these efforts have encountered many difficulties.
These difficulties exist because of the large number of relevant variables which must be considered and because of the highly subjective nature of the phenomena of mental illness. In addition, we are confronted with the problems of dealing simultaneously with biological, psychological, and social data.
As a result, the current stage of research in psychiatry is primarily concerned with problems of methodology, and the accurate evaluation of the effectiveness of various forms of treatment is yet to be achieved.
The 1962 annual meeting of the American Psychopathological Association discussed these problems; the proceedings of which are published in this book. Most of the papers deal with the evaluation of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and drug treatments. While a few refer to actual studies, the implicit theme is methodological and various problems and suggestions for their resolution are offered. These range from the use of 'multi-variate statistical methods with large subject populations', to the intensive clinical studies of single cases.
This volume is intended as a memorial to Franz Alexander, who was awarded the society's Samuel W. Hamilton Memorial Award,