Psychoanalytic Process Research Strategies

Hartvig Dahl This is a book about the future that we hope will arouse the curiosity of clinicians and point a direction for researchers. It marks the surprisingly rapid evolution of psychodynamic psychotherapy research from an applied toward a basic science, and, as its title implies, describes strategies to follow rather than results to live by. It was not always thus. A quarter of a century ago the editors of two volumes of psychotherapy research reports summarized the state of the field then: Although there has been a great accumulation of clinical observations and experimental findings, the field has made relatively little progress. There has been little creative building on the work of others (Parloff and Rubinstein 1962). Psychological research generally has tended to be insuffi- ciently additive. Research people often find it hard to keep informed of related work done on the same site and else- where, and therefore do not build upon each other's foun- dation (Luborsky and Strupp 1962).