Abstract
From the beginning, psychoanalysis, and the many psychotherapeutic treatments based on it, have shown an odd and very curious lack of interest in outcome research. When a new method of treatment is introduced, one would have imagined that its relative success or failure in curing the disease for the treatment of which it has been introduced would be of the utmost interest and importance; psychoanalysis has been a curious exception to this rule. Freud (1922) must bear the responsibility for this lack of interest. This is what he had to say: “Friends of analysis have advised us to counter-balance a collection of failures by drawing up a statistical enumeration of our successes. I have not taken up this suggestion either. I brought forward the argument that statistics would not be valuable if the units collated were not alike and the cases which had been treated were in fact not equivalent in many respects. Further, the period of time that could be reviewed was short for one to be able to judge of the permanence of the cures; and of many cases it would be impossible to give any account.
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© 1985 Spectrum Publications, Inc.
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Eysenck, H.J. (1985). Studying the Effects of Psychotherapy. In: Galnd, R.N., Fawzy, F.I., Hudson, B.L., Pasnau, R.O. (eds) Current Themes in Psychiatry. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07746-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07746-5_7
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