In an era of managed care and health care reform the search for short-term, effective psychotherapy models has taken on increased significance. There has been no dearth of brief psychodynamic psychotherapy prototypes, often designed and developed by practicing psychoanalysts. However, these therapies, as is true of longer psychoanalytic therapies, have generally not been accompanied by robust research studies which have demonstrated their effectiveness.

Cognitive therapy has attracted interest in recent years, as several impressive studies have indicated that its efficacy for treating depression is equivalent to that of pharmacological treatments. At the same time, there has arisen an increasing interest on the part of practitioners of the psychodynamic and the cognitive therapies (in