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O'bìos brakùs, é dè téchne macré.Life is brief, and art is long.
The histories of brief dynamic psychotherapy and of long-term psychoanalysis are inextricably intertwined. The two processes were combined in Freud's first experimental treatments, although they later developed independently. Their respective paths were kept officially separate even when they did meet so as to avoid “dangerous” confusion. An illustration of this is provided by the famous controversy in which F. Alexander (Alexander and French, 1946) was opposed to E. Jones (1946) and K. Eissler (1950). That disputation was touched on in an article by Osimo (1990).
In general, the search for briefer and more effective forms of psychoanalysis was considered to be a way of questioning its validity and value—and as such was opposed—rather than acknowledged as way to improve psychoanalysis. Balint, for instance, certainly was one of the most distinguished of the “brief” psychotherapists; in fact, he initiated in 1954 a well-known Brief Psychotherapy Workshop at Tavistock Clinic, London. This aspect of his multiform pioneering work, however, was not particularly emphasized in his writings. His remarkable book on the subject (Balint et al., 1972) was published posthumously.
As Malan (1963/1975) stated:
With psychoanalysis the most easily identified tendency … has been towards an increase in the length of therapy. Thus anyone who tries to develop a technique of brief psychotherapy is trying to reverse an evolutionary process impelled by powerful forces, and it is as well that he should first identify these forces, and specifically try to oppose them (p. 6).