As I have tried to show in previous posts, psychoanalysts do not have a set of tools to apply. Contrary to what a clinician would do, psychoanalysts will not treat your symptom, let's say your eating disorder, in the same way that they will treat the eating disorder of the next person. Psychoanalysts do not work with disorders, they work with people, real people who have real histories.

We have reached a crucial point in our investigation. We have seen that Randomized Control Trials are not really suitable for testing the effectiveness of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. We have also seen that when focusing on psychoanalysis our standard methodologies for collecting evidence do no justice to it. So, what do we do?

First we need to understand (and accept) that the approach of a psychoanalyst is fundamentally different to the approach of the clinician; it's not better or worse, it's different.

(In fact it's because of this difference that many feel inclined to argue that psychoanalysis is not a health profession for all intents and purposes of the Health Professions Council. But that's another story.)