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To clinicians, researchers, and everyone else interested in the advancement of psychotherapy as a science, the publication of the Final Report of the Menninger Foundation's Psychotherapy Research Project is an event of considerable importance. The study had already been in the planning stage for several years when it was formally inaugurated in 1954. It represents more than two decades of concentrated, systematic, and serious work by a highly distinguished group of clinician-researchers, all of whom were deeply committed to the theory and practice of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy (a term that seems preferable to the questionable distinction between “psychoanalysis” and “psychotherapy”). The project was truly a group effort, and it had a sizable cast. As might be expected, numerous participants came and went, and the final authors are virtually a second generation. Lewis Robbins, the original director of the project, was succeeded by Robert S. Wallerstein, who guided the project for the better part of its duration. Otto F. Kernberg saw it to completion.
A project of this magnitude has a “personal” and sociological as well as a scientific history; the former, in the long run, may be more significant for the history of science than the latter, but it is not likely to be written soon.
As for formal publications, numerous reports on phases of the project have appeared in print over the years or were presented at scientific meetings. Indeed, there are probably no studies in the area