Many analysts claim that psychoanalytic research is not clinically relevant. However, a research report at the December 1997 meeting by Susan Vaughan et al. did present a relevant finding — namely, that analytic process could not be assessed reliably by different analysts and may actually not be a viable concept. Consistent with their tentative conclusion is the fact that five years of study by a COPE committee failed to produce any agreement on a definition of analytic process.
While it is possible that further work may enable Vaughan et al. to demonstrate that analytic process can be reliably assessed, it is also possible that despite the most intensive, dedicated efforts, it remains impossible to assess analytic process reliably. More specific, detailed aspects of patients' and analysts' behavior have been rated reliably by other researchers — Hartvig Dahl, Mardi J. Horowitz, Horst Kächele, Lester Luborsky, Sherwood Waldron, and others — but they did not attempt to rate a concept at such a high level of inference as analytic process.
The Certification Committee regularly evaluates case write-ups for evidence of analytic process. Taken together, Vaughan's finding and the failure of the COPE study group raise serious question whether this fundamental concept is measurable and, therefore, viable. “I know analytic process when I see it” is inadequate as a foundation for a basic concept.
If the Certification Committee is reasonably confident about the reliability of its measurement of analytic process, it should welcome the opportunity to study whether members' judgments are being made reliably. The Committee on Scientific Activities, if requested, would be pleased to organize such a study of the reliability of ratings of members of the Certification Committee by enlisting the aid of psychoanalytic researchers.
Should such investigation reveal that ratings of analytic process are not being made reliably by members of the Certification Committee, that committee might consider, in consultation with psychoanalytic researchers, changing to assessment of patients' and analysts' behavior at the lower levels of inference that have been measured reliably in the psychoanalytic research literature.
Joseph Schachter, M.D., Ph.D.