The Role of Research of Psychoanalytic Therapies in Psychoanalytic Education: Twenty Good Reasons, Why We Should Know More about Research

Abstract

During the last twenty years not only in psychoanalytic therapies but also in psychotherapy as a whole there was a big positive shift due to the psychotherapy research. The author gives twenty reasons why research is important in psychoanalytic therapies and educations. The development of research is divided in five phases because it makes easier to define what psychotherapist should know about psychotherapy research also to prevent the development of psychotherapeutic ideologies in the future.

Editor’s note: Being invited by the organizer, the author presented the following lecture on the first conference of newly-founded ECPP (European Confederation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies) in Ljubljana. He briefly presents twenty issues, which are important, not only for the future development of the psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapies, but also for the development of psychotherapy as independent scientific discipline. These are the issues where the viewpoints of the psychotherapists differ, when the discussion about the future of psychotherapy as an independent discipline and an autonomous profession on a “high scientific level” as demanded by the Strassbourg declaration from the year 1990, which is still considered as a “magna charta of psychotherapy” takes place. Therefore the views and argumentations of the eminent representative of European psychoanalysis and the leader of many research projects are a valuable orientation and a challenge for discussion.