Editorial

Welcome to the second issue of 2023 which commences with ‘A comprehensive overview of randomized controlled trials of psychodynamic psychotherapies’ by Peter Lilliengren. For many, particularly policy makers such as NICE, Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are currently considered the ‘gold standard’ for evaluating psychosocial interventions including psychodynamic psychotherapies. Psychodynamic psychotherapies have a somewhat unwarranted reputation for lacking such evidence, and Lilliengren sets out to counter this by summarising all available RCTs involving psychodynamic psychotherapies. The article describes a thorough literature search which yielded 298 studies published over the last 55 years. The number of studies has increased over time with over 40% of these published in the last 10 years. Most of the studies were conducted in western countries, evaluating psychodynamic psychotherapies of brief duration (less than 40 sessions) for adults with mood, psychosomatic, anxiety, or personality disorders. The studies used comparative, additive, parametric and dismantling designs and include a total of 374 comparisons. Categorization of the outcomes suggests that psychodynamic psychotherapies typically outperform inactive controls, while comparisons with active treatments, including Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, typically indicate no statistical difference. While the evidence-base for psychodynamic psychotherapies is growing, Lilliengren suggests that there are still major limitations and many research questions yet to be addressed. He highlights a pressing need to disseminate this existing research to policy makers and the general public, as well as integrating the findings into psychodynamic training curricula.

One of the aims of this journal is to present a range of different types of research evidence, and to advocate for the role of alternative methodologies to the RCT in providing evidence for the effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapies. To this end, the s