Editorial

It is with great pleasure that I welcome Dr. Paul Cundy as our new Assistant Editor. Paul is an experienced Clinical Psychologist currently working in the City & Hackney Primary Care Psychotherapy Consultation Service. His knowledge of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, as well as both quantitative and qualitative research methodology, makes him ideally qualified for this role.

The papers and book reviews in this Spring issue of the journal demonstrate the pluralistic nature of contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy in which the use of different research methods and development of different treatment modalities may advance our understanding of patients’ experiences and responses to our therapeutic endeavours. Indeed, plurality and research methodology in psychoanalysis constitute the focus of our first paper ‘Pluralistic approaches to the study of process and outcome in psychoanalysis: The LAC Depression Study’ by Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Lisa Kallenbach and Margerete Schoett. In defining psychoanalysis as a specific scientific discipline of the unconscious, this paper explores the many different forms of research that have emerged in the last 100 years in psychoanalysis. The authors differentiate between two broad groups of psychoanalytic research: clinical research, meaning genuine psychoanalytic research in the psychoanalytic situation itself; and extra-clinical research, which occurs after the psychoanalytic sessions, embraces a variety of research strategies, and includes empirical, experimental and interdisciplinary studies. The authors illustrate their ideas with reference to a major on-going study on depression at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt, which employs different research methodologies including a randomised controlled trial comparing psychoanalytic treatment with cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) in the treatment of chronically depressed patients.

The theme of research into the treatment of depression with psychoanalytically informed psychot