Do the Processes of Psychoanalytic Work Lead to Benefit? Studies by the APS Research Group and the Psychoanalytic Research Consortium

Abstract

There is a need for careful study of the relationships between the psychoanalytic/psychodynamic processes and their outcomes, yet the raw data to accomplish this study (i.e., psychoanalyses and psychoanalytic psychotherapies fully recorded and transcribed, and empirical instruments for assessing from an analytic perspective both the processes and results of these treatments) have been limited. Two related strategies to solve this deficit have been developed over the past 30 years by the Psychoanalytic Research Consortium (PRC): (1) the collection of an increasing database currently holding 31 fully recorded psychoanalyses and a number of long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapies safeguarded, confidentialized, and made available to the field; and (2) the development of new measures for assessing processes and outcomes of treatments from an analytic point of view, such as the Analytic Process Scales (APS), the Dynamic Interaction Scales (DIS), and the Personality Health Index (PHI) with RADIO categories. This article summarizes the history of the PRC and some of the findings of the research conducted with the APS, DIS, and PHI on the PRC cases.

Notes

¹ Patients who give such permission are intending to make a contribution to the field, and usually are aware of the insecure empirical link between technique used and benefit. A member of an Institutional Review Board has pointed out clinicians’ ethical obligation to respect the intent of such permissions and not let patients’ contribution go to waste.

² The group includes or has included Anna Burton, James Crouse, Stephen Firestein, Marianne Goldberger, Fonya Helm, David Hurst, John Jemerin, John Lundin, Seymour Moscovitz, Robert Scharf, Jonathan Shedler, and Kenneth Winarick, as well as the authors.

³ The underlying rationale stemmed from finding a high degree of agreement in clinicians’ judgments about how healthy or ill a given patient was, based on the highest scoring items in their SWAP, and also a high degree of agreement among clinicians about the likely overall health significance of each of the SWAP items.

⁴ Federica Genova, Federica Angeloni, Chiara Ristucci, and Valentina Mellone, and others.

⁵ Scores are averages of the early sessions (first 4 then 4 six weeks later) in each case.

⁶ This finding is of course tentative, based on a small number of cases, and there are other aspects that need to be taken into account, such as the “ceiling effect” of the initial PHI values. For instance, one patient had an initial PHI of 88, and a final PHI of 100, hence could not improve more than 12 points.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sherwood Waldron

Sherwood Waldron, M.D., is Chair of the Psychoanalytic Research Consortium, New York.

Francesco Gazzillo

Francesco Gazzillo, Ph.D., is at the Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome.

Karl Stukenberg

Karl Stukenberg, Ph.D., is at the Department of Psychology, Xavier University, Cincinnati.