Scientific progress in psychodynamic formulation

This issue of psychiatry contains five papers describing or comparing five different methods for making a psychodynamic formulation (Luborsky and Crits-Christoph; Horowitz; Johnson et al.; Perry, Augusto, et al.; Perry, Luborsky, et al.). As Luborsky and Crits-Christoph make clear in their introduction, while the idea of the psychodynamic formulation originated with Freud, successful efforts to develop scientific methods for making a formulation are largely a phenomenon of the past decade. Indeed, since the introduction of the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method (Luborsky 1977), around a dozen methods have been developed with the same overall aim. Let us consider why this is important.