evidence-based medicine

On the Effectiveness of Psychoanalytic Therapy

Analytic therapy doesn't always play nice with so-called “evidence based medicine,” not least because long-term therapy does not neatly fit into the limited sample sizes and rapid timelines such studies rely upon. More crucially, the subjective improvements that arise from psychodynamic therapy can be hard to quantify and even harder to observe from outside; often they are subtle but essential transitions which resist easy classification. Even so, there is a growing body of research that which consistently confirms the notion that analytic psychotherapy is both useful and persistent:

However, the acid test of the efficacy of any method lies in the availability of hard evidence in the form of research. And, as it happens, we have two recent studies of psychoanalysis that offer evidence of its validity. . . .

The author goes on to describe two recent studies which have demonstrated the power of psychoanalytic therapy. The key, he says, is what makes this therapy unique: the relationship between therapist and patient, and the many ways this relationship can act as a prism for understanding the patient’s deepest issues.

We have seen precisely this dynamic yield extraordinary results time and again. If you’d like to find a therapist in NYC today, including low-cost psychotherapy and experts in many subspecialties, please contact the experts here.