Psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy of substance abuse (with observations on the Penn-VA Study)

The Penn-VA psychotherapy project was designed to test the hypothesis that the addition of supportive expressive or cognitive behavioral psychotherapy might add a differential benefit to the usual drug counseling of opiate addicts. The results indeed showed that the patients who had treatment administered by the trained psychotherapists did better than those who had only the regular drug counseling. This author describes his experiences as one of the psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists. Important aspects of this technique and common themes that emerge in the course of treatment are discussed. It is suggested that this treatment approach can be successfully applied to the treatment of the abuse of other substances including alcohol and outside the research setting.