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The relationship between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy has been a heated, unresolved issue for over 50 years. “There has been intense controversy, indicating how complex the issues are. The history of the attitudes towards the relationship between psychotherapy and psychoanalysis has been determined by increased explication of, and changes in the dynamic process as well as the impact of economic, social and political influences” (Schwartz, 2000, p. 1). In a historical context, psychotherapy was initially the term applied to all treatment of mental disorders. Psychoanalysis as formulated by Freud was a specific specialty or subcategory of psychotherapy. As psychoanalytic theory developed and extended its conceptual base, a hierarchical reversal emerged, and psychotherapy seemed subsumed under the aegis of psychoanalysis in both theory and practice. Tarachow (1963) stated that “psychoanalysis represents a basic model and is the theoretical baseline for various psychotherapeutic departures.” (p. 8) He indicated that the “technique of psychotherapy is not the technique of psychoanalysis,” but that the theory involves an understanding of the same factors derived from psychoanalytic concepts.
The decision to write on the essential difference between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy was stimulated by the results of a survey conducted by the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP, , this journal). New insights