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As most psychodynamic clinicians and scholars are well aware, psychoanalysis has long been under attack in clinical settings, in academia, and in the public domain, as well. Although many of these attacks are unfounded, their accumulated impact is nonetheless significant. Just as a politician’s repeated assertions that her opponent is untrustworthy will eventually alter people’s perceptions of the person being attacked—regardless of the veracity of these assertions—decades of unfounded accusations have led psychologists and members of the public to believe, incorrectly, that psychoanalytic concepts are untested, untestable, and repeatedly disconfirmed by empirical studies. (The fact that these three statements cannot simultaneously be true seems not to have impeded their broad acceptance in the professional and lay communities.) As a result, psychoanalysis has been increasingly marginalized, in both research and clinical settings; the situation has grown so dire that some writers have gone so far as to predict the impending death of psychoanalysis.
These criticisms notwithstanding, there have been a number of compelling empirical studies, literature reviews, and meta-analyses in recent years documenting the effectiveness of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapy, and the heuristic value and clinical utility of a broad array of psychoanalytic concepts. To maximize the impact of these investigations it is important that the psychoanalytic community—and the broader mental health community as well—be made aware of the most compelling contemporary research testing and evaluating psychoanalytic ideas. It is time to bring together our best work in this area, to set the stage for an empirically informed psychoanalysis in the 21st century and beyond.
With this as context, four practical issues led us to undertake this project at this time:
The challenges of managed care and universal health coverage. Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy are struggling to find their nich