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I would like to address this quite complex issue by emphasizing, above all, the need to maintain a binocular vision that aims at never loosing the sight of a broader background, far broader than the interactions it summons and, at the same time, at focusing on the peculiarity of the relationship between rhythm of analysis and the ways the unconscious unfolds. While it is quite obvious that the frequency of sessions, being one of the dimensions of the analytic apparatus (usually called setting), can in no way be regarded as a separate element — otherwise it would turn into a fetish — the awareness that a debate about frequency risks to take predictable shortcuts — such as a polarization of stances, a drift to rigidly defined schools of thought or cultural traditions, which would actually stifle a more flexible research attitude — is much more blurred.
Therefore, the research commitment we engaged in, as a National Training Institute, is, to my mind, a challenging opportunity for reflection. The experimentation entailed also the possibility to follow a three-session-a-week case. As we all know, this kind of frequency has been prompted by an increasing difficulty for candidates to find four-session-weekly cases, and from this point of view it is a further, though indirect, evidence of the state of our profession that registers a remarkable descrease in the requests for analysis, as 2004 SPI-Eurisko survey showed. The indisputable social pressure, however, that demands us to rethink our clinical practice, does not do justice, in my view, to an issue that deserves greater scrutiny because of its relevance. We need to start from a difficulty reflecting on the very practice of psychoanalysis and its possibilities for survival.
The two inquiries, very different from one another but in their claim to provide some figures, have the insuppressible value of being two complementary observation Vertexes. I therefore view them as effective pre-texts that spurred me to develop my thi