Abstract

MACHADO, Letícia Vier  and  AGUIAR, Fernando. Efficacy of psychotherapy: notes on an evaluation culture in a French health report. Estud. pesqui. psicol. [online]. 2016, vol.16, n.spe, pp. 1199-1219. ISSN 1808-4281.

The growing expansion of cognitive sciences in the last decade has confronted psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method and questioned its therapeutic efficacy. In 2004, the French General Directory of Health demanded a group of experts to conduct an evaluation report on the major psychotherapies practiced in France, and to examine the effectiveness of the treatments undertaken. This article results from a theoretical and bibliographical research and aims to present part of the recent history of psychoanalysis in France, describing the published report, analysing, and discussing it, with the support of psychoanalytic texts or texts about psychoanalysis. We explore the report's impasses as well as some political and economic issues that permeated the publication, which concluded the ineffectiveness of psychoanalysis compared to other approaches evaluated. The findings show the cultural importance given to evaluation practices and to the pursuit of a complete state of well-being. In sequence, they point out some biases in the psychoanalytic evaluation conducted under the evidence-based medicine method and clarify the report's repercussions on the treatment of autism by psychoanalysts in France a decade after.

Keywords : psychoanalysis; psychotherapy; evaluation; efficacy.

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