ABSTRACT
Freud regarded psychoanalysis as the most refined of all therapeutic methods, ‘pure gold’ compared to the inferior ‘copper’ of its competitors, and few psychoanalysts would dissent from that view. Refined it may well be, but numerous research studies have not ranked it as necessarily the most successful. In fact, the psychodynamic therapies generally have fared rather badly in the surveys of therapeutic outcome (Malan 1973). But the situation is rather more complicated, in so far as most of these studies have themselves proved to be methodologically flawed and their criteria for improvement not sufficiently sophisticated. As the quality of the research has improved, analytic psychotherapy increasingly comes to look more effective. Nonetheless it has to be conceded that forms of psychotherapeutic treatment other than psychoanalysis can justifiably claim their share of good results, depending on circumstances and the nature of the disorder.
