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A consistent finding from the research is that patients who undergo psychoanalytic psychotherapy appear to be making considerable psychological gains long after treatment has ended. An increasing number of meta-analyses (such as Abbass et al, 2009; de Maat et al, 2009; Leichsenring and Rabung, 2008; Leichsenring et al, 2004) suggest that this is the case, with larger effect sizes found at follow-up than at the end of treatment. By contrast, the benefits of other therapies tend to decay over time (de Maat, Dekker, Schoevers et al, 2006; Hollon et al, 2005; Westen, Novotny, and Thompson-Brenner, 2004; excepting manualized treatments for specific anxiety conditions – see Westen et al, 2004).

Findings in relation to personality disorders are perhaps the most promising (such as Winston, 1994; Hellerstein et al, 1998; Town et al, 2011). A meta-analysis examining the efficacy of both psychoanalytic psychotherapy and CBT for personality disorder published in the American Journal of Psychiatry (Leichsenring and Leibing, 2003) showed pre- to posttreatment effect sizes of 1.46 for psychoanalytic psychotherapy and 1.0 for CBT. A study by Bateman and Fonagy (2008) showed that mentalization-based therapy (MBT – a psychoanalytic psychotherapy adapted for personality disorder) leads to enduring benefits five years after completion. At five-year follow up, 87% of patients who received ‘treatment as usual’ still met diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder, compared to 13% of patients who had received psychoanalytic therapy. There is as yet, no other treatment which yields such positive results for personality pathology.

There is also a slowly growing body of evidence which suggests that psychoanalytic psychotherapy is an effective treatment for major depressive disorder (e.g. Driessen et al, 2013) and for somatic disorders and medically unexplained symptoms (Abbas et al, 2008; 2009). Most recently, Leichsenring and Klein (2014) reviewed the evidence for psychoanalytic therapy for specific mental disorders in adults, meta-analysing 47 RCTs published between January 1970 and September 2013 that looked at the efficacy of psychoanalytic psychotherapy for specific mental disorders using treatment manuals and valid measures for diagnosis and outcome. The meta-analysis showed that psychoanalytic therapy is efficacious for many common (and diagnosable) mental disorders, including depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and substance-related disorder.

It should also be noted definitively that psychoanalytic psychotherapy does have scientific support. Sweeping assertions that psychoanalytic work lacks any scientific credibility can no longer stand up to scrutiny (such as Barlow and Durand, 2005). Perpetuating such assertions also does a disservice to patients. Further, psychoanalytic psychotherapy shows significantly strong effect sizes at long-term follow up. The evidence makes it clear that patients receive lasting benefits, which go well beyond the remission of symptoms.