Reviving freud's vision of a psychoanalytic science: Implications for clinical training and education

Traditional assumptions about the analytic encounter have contributed to the detachment of psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the empirical movement that has dominated mainstream academic clinical psychology. However, recent research findings on the process and mechanisms of change within psychoanalytic forms of treatment now provide much needed empirical support for some of the basic tenets of psychoanalytic theory and practice, challenge long-standing notions regarding the link between therapeutic technique and clinical improvement, and suggest that factors once believed to be unique to psychoanalytic psychotherapy might be playing a crucial role in the promotion of change in other therapeutic modalities. The implications of these process research findings for the present state and future of clinical training and education are provided.