Commentary by a Member of the British Psychoanalytic Society

This paper contains a set of thoughtful observations, drawn from many years of experience in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, on the question of how many sessions a week analysts choose to offer their patients and why, with a whole set of connected factors related to this issue.

As the paper makes observations designed to engage in this debate, but does not construct a hypothesis, argue for and against this, through presenting findings, and then drawing a set of conclusions, it is difficult not to find points of agreement and disagreement with what is said, but in a somewhat arbitrary fashion. So much of what is said makes useful and good sense, in a general way.

I noted that the author says that his communication comes from ‘personal work experience’, which includes ‘personal belief’, ‘idiosyncratic choice’ and ‘faith’ and he has a level of scepticism about ‘sophisticated language’ that ‘supposedly characterizes a scientific pronouncement’. Nevertheless, the demonstration and attempted evaluation of our psychoanalytically informed postulates, theoretical and technical, need to take place. This is done through the written dissemination of our work in professional journals and books, through shared formal discussion and debate, and through the establishment of educational models of training for candidates derived from this. In spite of the difficulty of supplying proof, rather than amassing evidence that can be scrutinized, we continue to demonstrate, and attempt to evaluate, our work. We therefore have to allow for the central paradox of ‘not knowing’, but ‘knowing in part’ to reside at the core of psychoanalytic practice. We certainly do have to try to find better and better ways to address what is so difficult to address formally. Therefore, defining the parameters of what we can usefully describe, for the purposes of enhancing understanding, applies, as much as ever, in this instance of the formulation of a paper that tackles the question of the provision of time to a