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Methodologic Considerations

THERESE BENEDEK, M.D.

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1963;8(4):311-322.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In this research-minded age, when methods of investigations rank high among your interests, I feel out of place, or rather out of date, since I plan to discuss a research which began 25 years ago and was published as a monograph 20 years ago.¹ In order to do this with any hope of success I ask for your willingness to reverse your thinking and to imagine psychoanalytic research as it was about 30 years ago.

Because mechanical recording appears to be a necessity to many investigators, I want to remind you that until about 32 years ago, psychoanalysts adhered to Freud's advice not to take notes during analytic sessions but to make case records only after the session was over, or at the end of the working day.^* Alexander was the first to break with this tradition, and he did it on a relatively large scale.

When the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
CHICAGO

Footnotes
Submitted for publication Sept. 21, 1962.

Presented to the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Clinic, New York City, March 31, 1962.

It is understandable that each analyst remembered what made sense to him, i.e., what fitted his expectations or touched his empathy. Thus the core problem of psychoanalytic research became a seemingly inevitable part of the clinical method.