ABSTRACT
Worldwide, the pressure on psychoanalysis to prove the results of its
treatments according to the criteria of so-called evidence-based
medicine has increased. While a large number of studies on the
results of psychoanalytic short-term therapies are now available,
such studies are still largely lacking on psychoanalysis and
psychoanalytic long-term therapies. In a large multicentre study,
the results of psychoanalytical and cognitive-behavioural longterm
therapies in chronically depressed patients were compared, Both
psychotherapies led to statistically highly significant changes in
depressive symptoms three years after the start of the treatments
However, the focus of psychoanalytic treatments is not exclusively
on reducing psychopathological symptoms, but on changes in the
inner world of the patients that are reminiscent of the goal of
psychoanalyses that Freud has characterized as developing “the
ability to love, work and enjoy life.” In the German-speaking
community, such transformations are called “structural changes.”
This article reports results on such structural changes achieved
with the help of a sophisticated measuring instrument, the
Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics (OPD). These socalled
structural changes are compared with symptomatic
changes. Three years after the start of the treatments, significantly
more patients in psychoanalytical treatments show such structural
changes than patients in cognitive-behavioural treatments.
Læs hele artiklen >> How to measure sustained psychic transformations – Symptomatic and structural changes
