Pluralistic approaches to the study of process and outcome in psychoanalysis. The LAC depression study: a case in point

Abstract

Approaching process and outcome in psychoanalysis is a topic that touches on ambitious and complex epistemological and methodological issues. As discussed in the first part of the paper, in keeping with challenging epistemic considerations, it would seem appropriate to describe the specificity of psychoanalysis as a specific scientific discipline of the unconscious (spezifische Wissenschaft des Unbewussten, see LIT). Psychoanalysis, over its more than 100-year history, evolved a range of highly advanced research methods for investigating the specific object of its research, namely unconscious conflicts and fantasies. Hence, like many other scientific disciplines, contemporary psychoanalysis comprises a plurality of theories, methods of clinical treatments as well as a plurality of research topics. This position is discussed with reference to a model illustrating different forms of clinical and extra-clinical research in psychoanalysis. A major, ongoing comparative study of outcomes of psychoanalytical and cognitive behavioural, long-term treatments of chronically depressed patients, the so-called LAC-study, serves to illustrate the richness of contemporary research in psychoanalysis.Keywords: clinical and extra-clinical research in psychoanalysis; plurality of methods; theories and research; outcome and process research in psychoanalysis; chronic depression

What does Neuroscience Offer Psychoanalysis? Commentary on Solms’s “Revision of Drive Theory”

“…In fact, it is important to acknowledge that Solms (2020) has recently provided an example of how to use concepts from cognitive psychology (i.e., nondeclarative memory) to study the clinical phenomenon of psychoanalytic process. Others (Jiminez and Altimir 2020; Leuzinger-Bohleber, Kallenbach, and Schoett 2016) also agree that psychoanalytic process can be examined within a natural science model. And Jaffe (2021) has shown that the importance of working through in clinical analysis can be understood using the cognitive concept of procedural memory.…”