ABSTRACT
Ever since Sigmund Freud abandoned his attempts to anchor psychological principles in neurobiology, the psychotherapeutic field has shown an unfortunate lack of concern for the role memory plays in psychotherapy treatments. One of the reasons so little attention has been given to case reports in psychodynamic circles is because of our inheritance from Freud and the pioneers: an emphasis on paradigmatic correctness rather than descriptive criteria. Well into the 1980s, the psychoanalytic establishment continued to claim empirically verified methods and insisted that its theoretical and technical formulations should be viewed as science because its members framed them in biomedical terms. In presenting the contextual model of psychotherapy, Bruce Wampold and colleagues compare it with the traditional medical model, which, in their description, assumes that sufficient psychological explanations exist for all mental disorders. Beyond manuals for assessments and for identifying psychopathology, psychotherapists are left with many uncertainties, often looking for guidance about what approaches have a chance to work.
