Audio-Recordings of the Psychoanalytic Dialogue: Scientific, Clinical and Ethical Problems

Abstract

The tape-recording of psychoanalytic sessions should by now be standard procedure for those who are prepared to undertake serious empirical research on the psychoanalytic process. However, the number of those who expose themselves to this procedure is still small, nearly as small as the number of those willing to engage in the careful scrutinizing of what they do when practicing psychoanalysis. Glover’s 1936 (1955) questionnaire investigation into the prevailing techniques among British psychoanalysts has to be looked upon more as an opinion poll than as actual empirical research.