This manuscript provides a review of the clinical case study within the field of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic treatment. The method has been contested for methodological reasons and because it would contribute to theoretical pluralism in the field. We summarize how the case study method is being applied in different schools of psychoanalysis, and we clarify the unique strengths of this method and areas for improvement. Finally, based on the literature and on our own experience with case study research, we come to formulate nine guidelines for future case study authors: (1) basic information to include, (2) clarification of the motivation to select a particular patient, (3) information about informed consent and disguise, (4) patient background and context of referral or self-referral, (5) patient's narrative, therapist's observations and interpretations, (6) interpretative heuristics, (7) reflexivity and counter-transference, (8) leaving room for interpretation, and (9) answering the research question, and comparison with other cases.

Discussing endings is a crucial part of the work of short-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy with adolescents, but there are different views on how best this should be done, and whether it is helpful or appropriate to link endings to interpretations of the transference. This study looks at how adolescent patients suffering from moderate to severe depression respond to interpretations around endings in a 28 sessions long, manualized psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Data comes from a randomized clinical trial in which all sessions were audio-recorded. Purposive sampling was used to identify four sessions with four different adolescents in which therapists raised the issue of upcoming endings, explored the patients' emotional responses and linked these to the transference. The four extracts were transcribed and analysed using Conversation Analysis. Findings show that patients either emphasized or diminished the importance of their relationship to the therapists and the consequences of the separation from them in response to transference interpretations. They managed the conversational exchange by either '' trouble-telling'' or '' story-telling'' . The authors reflect on the implication of patients' responses for treatment technique and consider whether transference work with adolescents should be paced and adapted more flexibly in short term psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

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