The Emerging Evidence Base for Psychodynamic Psychotherapies

Compared with other sorts of psychotherapies (behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, and interpersonal psychotherapies and their variants), psychodynamic psychotherapies have proven difficult to study using manualized treatments monitored for fidelity and research designs that pass muster with critical peer reviewers. As a result, these therapies have been slow to enter the marketplace of evidence-based psychiatric treatments. Nevertheless, psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals opt to practice psychodynamic psychotherapies to treat a wide range of clinical problems.

Short-Term Therapies

Practitioners may draw comfort from the increasing number of individual studies and meta-analyses that meet rigorous standards of des…