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This book aspires to demonstrate the therapeutic effectiveness of long-term analytical psychotherapy using a sizeable number of case examples. It is intended to provide an intensive insight - one not customarily accessible to many people - into psychoanalytical work. Indeed, the spectrum of psychoanalytically oriented individual therapies ranges from a handful of conversations to a high-frequency regime lasting several years. The fascinating thing about this is to follow the interaction of symptoms, character structures and the functioning of resistance, interpretation and insight. In clearly analytical fashion, contrasting with the classically medical view, it is presumed that mental symptoms are primarily not just a sign of illness but essentially embody the attempt to overcome an inner emotional conflict and represent a kind of attempt at self-healing. Twelve case descriptions of high-frequency psychoanalytical treatments, which for reasons of discretion and data protection have been made unrecognizable and thus cannot be attributed to individual analysts either, enable one to comprehend how a psychoanalytical process develops and the outcomes to which it leads. Any data that might have allowed patients to be identified have been altered, but only so as not to alter the relevant psychodynamic contexts for practical purposes.
Twenty-five non-systematically selected analysts of both sexes from the German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV) were approached in writing; of the 14 who had offered their collaboration, 2 later had to withdraw their undertaking, resulting in 12 clinical and non-theoretical case descriptions of about 30 pages each. A quarter of them spontaneously gave reasons why the high-frequency setting had been selected.
Nine of the 12 patients already had a record of more or less unsuccessful treatment. Eight suffered from organic disorders in addition to psychological problems. In all the life stories portrayed, the fathers seemed to play a subordinate