A survey of follow-up studies comprising 249 patients whose neurotic symptoms have either ceased or improved markedly after psychotherapy of various kinds other than psychoanalysis shows only 4 relapses (1.6%). This evidence contradicts the psychoanalytic expectation of inferior durability of recoveries obtained without psychoanalysis and does away with the chief reason for regarding analysis as the treatment of choice for neurotic suffering. The facts presented have gravely damaging implications for the whole psychoanalytic theory of neurosis, but accord with a theory based on principles of learning.
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