[Is psychoanalytic psychotherapy an "alternative treatment method"?]

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is a controversial treatment method even though it has an extensive theory and is widely used. Its assumptions continue to be challenged, especially by psychiatrists with a biologic-scientific orientation. Hence it is an appropriate model for examining the transitional area between textbook medicine and what are referred to as "alternative" treatment approaches. The historical development of psychiatry from the end of the 18th century was characterized on the one hand by the increasing influence of biological and technical methods of investigation and on the other by the increasing independence of the citizenry and societal acceptance of subjective emotional experience. The special contribution of Freudian psychoanalytic theory lies in its function as a medicator between these two approaches, whereby it develops analogies between the scientific knowledge of the time and psychic processes. At the same time it provides explanations of emotional illness that the individual can comprehend. This is what is unique about classical psychoanalysis and at the same time makes it problematic, as evidenced, for example, by the fact that so many different schools have developed. The integration of psychoanalysis in the form of psychoanalytic psychotherapy into textbook medicine gives the latter the advantage of being able to reach a clientele that in addition to wanting scientific-causal explanations also has a desire for existential interpretations of psychopathological states.