AUTHOR=Brakel Linda A. TITLE=Extinction Phenomena: A Biologic Perspective on How and Why Psychoanalysis Works JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=2 YEAR=2011 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00223 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00223 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=

This article presents the view that much of the success of classical psychoanalysis is centrally predicated on its biological potency; focusing not on neuropsychology, but on the biology of conditioning. The argument suggests that features of classic psychoanalytic technique – the couch, meetings several times per week with both parties present, and free association – uniquely facilitate intense transferences of various sorts, and that these in turn constitute the multiple and diverse extinction trials necessary to best approximate extinction.