ABSTRACT
Since its inception, the Sandler conference aimed at promoting and intensifying the dialogue between researchers and clinicians in psychoanalysis. A particular emphasis has been put on fostering discussions on psychoanalytic empirical research with clinicians. Following on this very aim, this chapter first presents core elements of the conceptual framework of research in psychoanalysis. Second, it provides an example of a psychoanalytic empirical research study aiming at bridging psychoanalysis and neuroscience. This study is called the MODE study and is a multimodal neuroimaging study in psychoanalysis in patients with chronic depression and childhood maltreatment. The research will be presented in more detail, namely, the hypotheses on which it is based, the questions it asks and the means it uses to try to answer them, to illustrate how such a dialogue is needed when developing an empirical psychoanalytic research.
