supported by the psychoanalytic establishment who may have been over-concerned about the apparent superficiality of brief therapy. The gap was rapidly filled by alternative therapies, with often very limited observational or theoretical basis, borrowing increasingly heavily, and relatively openly, from psychoanalytic discoveries (e.g. Ryle, 1994). This has reached a point where certain schema focused therapies which represent an extension of the cognitive behavioural tradition are hard to differentiate from psychoanalytic therapies (Meichenbaum, 1997; Young, 1990). We have tried to show above, that psychoanalytic technique is only illusorily based on psychoanalytic theory. Both the discoveries and the effects of cognitive behavioural therapy and even behaviour therapy, are as easy to explain in terms of psychoanalytic ideas as in terms of behavioural ones (Fonagy, 1989; Wachtel, 1977). It seems, therefore, regrettable that psychoanalysts were not more vigorous over the last 25 years in experimenting with and evolving new psychotherapeutic techniques, but rather rigidly sticking to the ‘one size fits all’ principle. They abandoned the field of technical innovation to psychologists who, in part at least because of the opposition of psychoanalysts, have come to define themselves as “new and innovative” in contrast to psychoanalytic ideas. This situation has altered somewhat, but only over very recent years. Many American institutes of psychoanalysis have started training psychotherapy candidates, only some of whom are expected to go on to full psychoanalytic training. Others have accepted directly the challenge of alternative therapies and are either working towards integrating effective components of these into psychoanalytically oriented treatments (Goldfried, 1995) or are working towards differentiating the effective elements of each (e.g. Jones, 1997). There is still a major gap in the integration of psychoanalysis and psychology, particularly in taking on board the major advances that the controlled, experimental study of human mental processes has brought to the psychology of language, perception, memory, motivation, emotion, development, social relationship and so on. The geneticist, Eric R. Kandel (1998) argued in a convincing way that “the future of psychoanalysis, if it is to have a future, is in the context of an empirical psychology, abetted by imaging techniques, neuro-anatomical methods, and human genetics. Embedded in the sciences of human cognition, the ideas of psychoanalysis can be tested, and it is here that these ideas can have their greatest impact” (p. 468). Q>#,-%#&"M(,@?B%(& The self-imposed isolation of psychoanalysis from the medical as well as the psychological sciences form but two of the major obstacles in the way of establishing a place for psychoanalysis at the table of the academy of the 21 st century. There are several practical and epistemological challenges that need to be overcome if the suggested integration of psychoanalysis with contemporary science is to become a reality. 1-%&?@(%&#%:"#,& The first of these is the unique focus of psychoanalytic writers on single case methodology that, as has been argued, shares a major burden of responsibility for the fragmentation of psychoanalysis as a discipline. There is no question but that single case studies are highly informative and much may be learned from the in-depth study of the single case. Our approach to the study of the single case may be improved, as indeed it undoubtedly has if we compare the quality of case reports from the 40s and 50s to current ones. The case study by itself, however, is insufficient as a method of investigation. It needs to be supplemented by other confirmatory procedures such as replication, detailed experimental studies, anatomical, genetic and neurophysiological investigations. Roger Perron (2001) appropriately underscores the benefits that medicine has derived from intensive single case investigations. This undoubtedly was, and, to a limited extent, remains the case. It, however, should be remembered that the usefulness of some of these single case investigations was not simply in the clinical insights they
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