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There is a saying among politicians that timing is everything. An excellent candidate running for office at the wrong time may have no chance of winning; a poor candidate running at the right time may be elected easily. In contrast, the value of scientific contributions are thought to be independent of the climate of the times in which they are published. This is not the case in regard to Panic. Had it been published in the fifties or sixties Vanggaard's claim that his report is an example of a psychoanalysis would have been rejected out of hand, because the treatment was both insufficiently intense and far too brief in duration (three times per week for 51 sessions plus 10 sessions and a final telephone call 'session' scattered over an additional nine months).
Unfortunately, we live in a time when the 'quick fix' is the order of the day. Non-analytic therapists are willing to assert that their therapies are better because they can achieve results in far less time that are just as good as analysis. And they are quick to point out that faster means more 'cost efficient'. If psychoanalysts accept this approach to treatment, they place themselves in direct competition with behaviour modification, cognitive therapy, drug therapy, etc. On this battlefield psychoanalysis is bound to lose because it does not subscribe to the value system that claims that less is more, that faster is better and that difficult tasks can be accomplished easily. But it is precisely because psychoanalysis is under siege from these non-analytic quarters, that an analyst who asserts that he has found a way to complete an analysis in sixty-two sessions must be taken seriously.
The consequences of accepting Vanggaard's claim that his therapy is an analysis are staggering, but if they have merit psychoanalysts the world over will be obliged to come to grips with the changes this would make in our profession. For example, it would mean that the underpinnings of the standards of the Internatio