the effectiveness of psychoanalysis in this population

A number of early studies of the treatment of psychopathic individuals involved psychoanalytic methods. These were virtually all case studies, and none compared the intervention with any other form of treatment or changes within a control group. Case histories are generally considered with some caution, as clinicians typically report their treatment successes, not their failures, so they represent a biased sample of cases. The successes reported in these studies may therefore not indicate the likely success rates among an unselected group of individuals, and do not provide strong evidence for the effectiveness of psychoanalysis in this population.