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The matter of the weekly frequency of sessions in psychoanalytic treatment has been much debated in psychoanalytic circles. At present it is even more so, perhaps because of social and cultural changes that are taking place in post-industrial Western societies, which do not stop at imposing ever more frenetic rhythms on the lives of individuals, but also bring in a culture of the ephemeral and external that does not marry well with the opportunity to reflect at length, and deeply, on one's own inner life. Before discussing the historical events and theoretical arguments that have characterized the debate in recent decades, I will review Freud's suggestions in regard to the weekly frequency of analytic sessions. But it is worth mentioning first that, among the many thousands of pages of his writings, the matter of the frequency of sessions was addressed only once, in «On Beginning the Treatment» (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psychoanalysis) (1913). Here Freud lays out the rules of psychoanalysis — which are presented as «advice» — without claiming their unconditional acceptance, inasmuch as the distinctiveness of the aim of psychoanalytic work resists a standardization of technique.
As far as Freud himself was concerned, he declared that he worked with patients every day with the exception of Sundays and major holidays. In uncomplicated cases, or when the treatment was already very advanced, he maintained that three hours a week were enough. Further limitations of time he felt were not useful, and so they were categorically rejected because, between one session and another, a «crust» formed, as always happens on Mondays (the «Monday crust»). Furthermore, if the intervals between sessions were extended, the treatment might lose contact with the current state of affairs.
The matter of the frequency of sessions never became the object of specific reflections in Freud's subsequent works, but it returned in his clinical practice at the beginning of the 1920s,