Measuring and Enhancing the Impact of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Research

Abstract

It is a great pleasure to be able to contribute to this groundbreaking collection of papers regarding the evidence base for psychodynamic psychotherapy. My involvement in this text is as something of an outside observer of the field. Although I received training and supervision in dynamic therapy, I am not a psychotherapist. I am a clinical scientist with an interest in the process by which research findings get applied in clinical practice. My comments here are therefore not on the content of psychodynamic psychotherapy research (of which I have only cursory knowledge), but rather on the process of incorporating this research into the actual care of patients. Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is an approach to patient care that requires (I) a body of evidence regarding effective treatments and (2) the application of those treatments that work (and abandonment of those that do not). Over the past decade and a half, EBM has become the predominant paradigm across all medical disciplines, now even within the laggardly field of psychiatry. In this context, those treatments for which evidence is lacking are in jeopardy of banishment from the medical/psychiatric mainstream. As one of the last outposts of resistance to the EBM perspective, dynamic therapy risks this fate, making this text (and other recent publications) of utmost import for those in the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)