To the Editor:

In his rebuttal of Lucy Zabarenko's critical evaluation of psychoanalytic research, Bob Wallerstein stated: “… I have an inherently much more optimistic outlook for our research and scientific future and its support by our discipline than she conveys in the whole spirit of her ‘Point of View’ …” (Newsletter 14: March, 1980, p. 4).

Twelve years ago, in his discussion of George Engel's “Some obstacles to the development of research in psychoanalysis” (J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn. 16:195-229, 1968), Bob stated: “… psychoanalytic research has never really gotten off the ground, has never acquired the essential and influential position within its own science that the research enterprise occupies within every other science … Psychoanalytic research is sorely underdeveloped, and still much beleaguered …” (p. 216).

Question: What happened during the past twelve years to make Bob more optimistic about psychoanalytic research?

Philip Rubovits-Seitz, M.D.

Washington, D.C.