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The author explores the subjective and objective nature of time in relation to brief psychotherapy, the contemporary contexts for this work and the impact of research on the changing culture of provision of counselling/psychotherapy. She describes clinical treatment using a brief Dynamic Relational approach with a traumatized patient in primary care who presents with panic and depression. Through this case she illustrates the most significant points of technique in her interpretation of this approach: assessment through interactional aspects of the first and second meetings, further assessment through history-taking and the development of narrative, forming a collaborative focus based on a maladaptive relational pattern, selective inattention and benign neglect, interpretative ‘action’, termination and the collaborative therapeutic summary and use of other attachment figures available in the primary care team setting, particularly during the termination phase. The patient's unconscious and conscious internalization processes enable brief treatment to be durable, and it is argued that depth can be achieved. The author contends that brief therapy requires specific techniques but also makes connections with long-term analytic work, for example, the parallel between Bion's concept of the ‘selected fact’ and the ‘focus’ in brief therapy.