Psychotherapy Research and Psychoanalytic Practice: Commentary on Papers by Lester Luborsky and Hans H. Strupp

Abstract

I discuss the views of Lester Luborsky (quite optimistic) and of Hans H. Strupp (less so) concerning the accumulating evidence for the favorable impact of psychoanalytic therapy research, as it has grown over recent decades, in shaping clinical psychoanalytic activity. I offer my perspectives on their views of the issues of (a) the effectiveness of psychoanalytic (psychodynamic) therapies vis-à-vis the varieties of nonanalytically based therapies; (b) long-term (time-unlimited) vis-à-vis short-term (time-limited) therapy, (c) the call for empirically supported treatments (ESTs), (d) the call for randomized clinical trials (RCTs), (e) the trend toward “manualization” of therapy approaches, and (f) the light that all these considerations can cast on the extent to which, and how, psychoanalytic therapy helps.