The research paper that I have linked to below is both striking and very important. It provides strong empirical evidence of the effectiveness of “psychodynamic psychotherapy”. That’s a technical term for those forms of psychotherapy, like the Jungian approach, which:
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take the unconscious dimension of individuals seriously;
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seek to relate to the unconscious in the therapy process;
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focus on affect and expression of emotion;
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identify recurring themes and patterns; and,
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consider past experience.
In this study, Shedler’s “Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy”, evidence shows psychodynamic therapies to have a treatment effect as large as those reported for other therapies whose proponents stridently proclaim them to be “empirically supported” and “evidence based.” What is particularly noteworthy, though, is that people who receive psychodynamic therapy maintain therapeutic gains and appear to continue to improve after treatment ends. The study also tends to indicate that non-psychodynamic therapies may be effective in part because the practitioners who are the most skilled at using those methods bring techniques into their practice that essentially originated in the theory and practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy. The researcher makes it clear that any perception that psychodynamic approaches lack empirical support “does not accord with available scientific evidence.”
These results, while not entirely new, are very striking. They are worthy of very careful consideration by the therapeutic profession as a whole.
I’d gratefully welcome your comments and reflections on any of your experiences with Jungian or other forms of depth psychology.
My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,
Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst
Website for Brian’s Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca
Email: brian@briancollinson.ca
PHOTO CREDIT: © Cristi111|Dreamstime.com
© 2010 Brian Collinson
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Interesting the results on drug therapy – just atrocious. And yet how the drug companies and corporate value system we have in US has have pushed it like anti-depressants are the healing waters of Bernadette.
I’ve come to distrust more and more academia given so much bias that so many so-called “experts” are willfully blind too. And these often are well-respected scholars and leaders in the establishment. I suppose Jung did the same by breaking with Freud.
Thanks for the link to the research paper Brian. It makes it easier to break away from the official “adopted” views – so important in order to achieve real psychological growth.
I think that there is some real validity to using scientific approaches to understanding the effectiveness of various tools and techniques. However, there are some real limitations to this approach that any honest psychology must acknowledge. A particularly important limitation which I certainly think that it is important to see, is that much of the “Science” that some approaches to psychological healing rely upon does not, and cannot, adequately take the experiencing human subject into account. If we lose sight of that subject, we have lost “who” it is who needs to be healed. How can we then help that person?
Similarly, if the person is merely seen as analogous to a computer that is in need of re-programming to remove software bugs — an approach known as “cognitivism” — the psychological uniqueness and dignity of the individual human being is being entirely missed. To embark upon that path would be an extremely dangerous direction for the discipline of psychology. Depth psychology is an emphatic “No” to such approaches.