[Psychotherapy in comparison: have all really earned a prize?]

The aim of the project is a comprehensive analysis of psychotherapeutic outcome research from a differential perspective. All controlled psychotherapy outcome studies which have been published until 1983 (n = 897) were carefully analyzed with an especially developed assessment-manual. Special importance was laid on those features of the results that throw some light on the comparative effects and prescriptive criteria of the therapies under investigation and their preconditions in the experimental design, measurement and statistical analysis of the respective study. The procedure is described in detail. It results in a comprehensive report on the research which has been done and the results that have been found for each psychotherapy method. An example of such a report is given.