Data of this type has been around for a while now. Pretty much all talk therapy works, for most conditions; and about 80-85% of its effectiveness comes from the relationship between the client and the practitioner.

Relationships, in and of themselves, are healing. Therapeutic techniques and orientations are mostly just a way for a therapist to quickly build up an alliance with a client.

The research also suggests that when other psychotherapies are effective, it may be because they include unacknowledged psychodynamic elements. "When you look past therapy 'brand names' and look at what the effective therapists are actually doing, it turns out they are doing what psychodynamic therapists have always done—facilitating self-exploration, examining emotional blind spots, understanding relationship patterns." Four studies of therapy for depression used actual recordings of therapy sessions to study what therapists said and did that was effective or ineffective. The more the therapists acted like psychodynamic therapists, the better the outcome, Shedler said. "This was true regardless of the kind of therapy the therapists believed they were providing."

I had a professor who had done research on CBT vs. psychodynamic therapists, and what actually happened during sessions. Her research showed that the CBT therapists encouraged *more* emotional expression and exploration (a no-no according the CBT manuals) in sessions than the psychodynamic therapists did.

Well I'd hope so: millions of people have tried it and think it's helpful. But I'm a bit suspicious of scientific meta-analyses where they review lots of other studies: publication bias means that they can show significant effects where none really exists. (I.e. studies which don't show an interesting effect don't get published, and some researchers may tweak the data to get an effect they want to see).

And this seems to be a meta-meta-analysis:

To reach these conclusions, Shedler reviewed eight meta-analyses comprising 160 studies of psychodynamic therapy, plus nine meta-analyses of other psychological treatments and antidepressant medications.

Though supposedly Shedler's study showed more than the Dodo bird verdict.

I had a professor who had done research on CBT vs. psychodynamic therapists, and what actually happened during sessions. Her research showed that the CBT therapists encouraged *more* emotional expression and exploration (a no-no according the CBT manuals) in sessions than the psychodynamic therapists did.

Interesting.