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The editor of this book has been largely responsible for the organization of the program of short-term therapy at the Montreal General Hospital and for setting up three International Symposia and Workshops on short-term dynamic psychotherapy in 1975, 1976 and 1977. At these conferences there was lively interchange of experiences and ideas among a sizable group of participants interested in brief approaches to treatment. The present volume contains a sample of the presentations made at the first two International Symposia.
In the opening chapter, Judd Marmor sounds the keynote of the book by stressing the importance of psychodynamic understanding as the basic framework for any technical psychotherapeutic operation. Papers and case presentations follow, mainly by Davanloo, Sifneos, and Malan, which concisely bring out some factors in the research projects carried out independently at their respective institutions, namely McGill, Harvard, and the Tavistock Clinic.
Davanloo summarizes the basic elements in a short-term program, stressing the factors of selection, establishment of a psychotherapeutic focus, motivation, psychological-mindedness, responses to interpretation, and the nature of the ego's defensive psychological organization. These concepts are formulated largely around classical psychoanalytic theory, patients with major conflicts organized around the oedipal genital level being considered most suitable for what Davanloo describes as his Broad-Focused Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. Sifneos presents a lucid and concise account of his “Short-Term Anxiety Provoking Psychotherapy,” which he considers the treatment of choice for mildly neurotic patients with circumscribed complaints organized around oedipal conflicts. Myths about short-term therapy are dealt with in an excellent chapter by Malan, who, reporting on the extensive studies at the Tavistock Clinic, explodes the common ideas that short-term therapy is applicable only to mild illness of recent onset, t