title: Extinction phenomena: a biologic perspective on how and why psychoanalysis works.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Linda A W
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Brakel