Robert S. Wallerstein (2001) traces these attempts back to their beginnings in 1917 and defines different generations of psychotherapy researchers. He mentions above all a number of American studies, that I – without making a claim to be exhaustive – will supplement with some European studies.
1. Generation (1917-1968): for the most part, retrospective studies that verified – with unspecific criteria – the successfulness of most of the psychoanalytic treatments. (Coriat, 1917; Fenichel, 1930, Jones, 1936; Alexander, 1937; Knight, 1941; Hamburg et al. 1967; Feldman, 1968).
2. Generation (1959 -….): in which two different groups of studies were carried out: a) Prospective, aggregated comparisons of different, exactly defined groups of psychoanalytic treatment. These studies relied on more sophisticated research methods and operationalized, for example, the criteria of success for the expected success of the therapy. Also they could verify that approximately 80% of all psychoanalytic treatments were successful. (Knapp, Levin, McCarter, Wermer, Zetzel, 1960; Shashin, Eldred and van Amerongen, 1975; Bachrach, Weber & Solomon, 1985; Erle & Goldberg, 1984). b) Individual studies that resulted from a methodological uneasiness that individual differences between the patients should not be mixed with group examinations, but to place the main focus on the individual consideration of the single treatment of different patients, as is fitting in psychoanalytic procedure, in which it always has to do with the understanding of unconscious structures of meaning. For this reason they used, for example, in their interviews some careful psychoanalytic methods, such as psychoanalytic follow-up interviews. (Pfeffer, 1963; Norman, Blacker, Oremland & Barrett, 1976, Schlessinger,1980, later follow-up studies at the Anna Freud Center by Target and Fonagy, 1994; DPV Follow-Up-Study by Leuzinger-Bohleber, Stuhr, Rüger and Beutel, 2003). These studies verified not only the effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapy, but also developed a number of unexpected, clinically interesting questions, for example, that with reference to the reduction of symptoms and to other therapy goals, some treatments proved to be effective but that these patients had not gone through a psychoanalytic process in a narrower sense.
3. Generation (1945-1986):
In these systematic and formal psychoanalytic studies of psychotherapy an examination of results and of the process were combined, i.e. statistical comparisons were made between the groups but in combination with systematic single case studies, that, for example, followed the fates of single patients over a longer period of time. (Bachrach, Galatzer-Levy, Skolnikoff &Waldron, 1991; Kantrowitz, 1986). An example of this 3rd Generation of psychoanalytic psychotherapy research is exemplified by the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation (Wallerstein, Robbins, Sargent u. Luborsky, 1956) that led to a wealth of insights on the results of psychoanalytic and supportive psychoanalytic therapies and on details concerning treatment techniques. Impressive is, for example, the careful longitudinal study of 42 patients over the course of several decades that Wallerstein published with the moving title Forty-two Lives in Treatment (Wallerstein, 1986). The current 4. generation (1970…) combines not only research of results and therapeutic processes but, thanks to new techniques (video/audio recordings), links microanalysis of therapeutic processes with research on results (beginning with early analysis of tape recordings by Earl Zinn, see Carmichael, 1956; Dahl, Kächele & Thomä, 1988; Strupp, Schacht & Henry, 1988; Beenen, 1997, Leuzinger-Bohleber, 1987, 1989; Grande, Rudolf & Oberbracht, 1997; Huber et al., 2012; Sandell, 1997; Leuzinger-Bohleber, Rüger, Stuhr, Beutel, 2003, Busch, Milrod & Sandberg, 2005, Beutel et al.,
PK
.01230/1.40/5&&'67894/0/571.8/5&&/6648./1.40&
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator