What a great way to decide on an therapy orientation

• Analytical Psychotherapy Trainee losing faith by Barry, 9/23/97
  • Keep Going! by Tim Trimble, 10/14/97
    
    

There you have it, the reason that so many people adhere to psychoanalysis. All that time and effort, it hasn't helped me but I can't give it up after all that investment.

Read the outcome literature, and weep. Psychoanalysis, after more than a century, is largely unvalidated. The previous post seems to me to sum it all up.

Alternative: get a good training in cognitive-behavioural therapy. Look at the outcome data and the experimental psychopathology which backs it up. Take panic disorder as an example. 90% of sufferers found to be panic free after 12 hours of therapy, 70% are "cured", ie no residual symptoms. Effects found to last for up to 3 years in trials conducted so far, with no evidence of a fallback (or of symptom substitution, contrary to predictions from psychodyamic theory). Then look at the miserable record of psychoanalysis. Q.E.D.

• CBT's a cookbook by Hunter, 12/17/97