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Berliner points out that there is a great need for short psychotherapeutic treatments and that psychoanalytic knowledge may be utilized to good advantage in many cases. The analyst attempts to obtain as complete a picture of the dynamics as possible, as quickly as he can, and then proceeds actively to interpret. Judgment and experience guide the analyst particularly in avoiding
the interpretation of 'deep' material. He cites cases in which analysis was not feasible but in which analytic psychotherapy enabled patients to carry on. The author feels that especially in cases of mild masochistic and obsessional conditions, and in impotence, it is possible successfully to treat patients who for whatever reasons are not able to be analyzed.
[In discussions of 'short' or 'brief' psychoanalytic therapy is implicit the statement that the psychoanalyst operates on an all or none principle of psychoanalysis or nothing for his patients. If such exist, it is a short-sighted, self-imposed limitation, and rare. In the psychotherapy of patients who are not suitable for psychoanalysis, a psychoanalyst inevitably practices a psychotherapy which, not psychoanalysis, is nevertheless psychoanalytic. Ed.]