Psychoanalysis Conducted at Reduced Frequencies

This paper explores the clinical indications for an optimal psychoanalysis conducted at reduced frequencies. Among other purposes psychoanalysis is an engagement that serves to demystify experience. The structure of multiple session frequency applied a priori and in the absence of other considerations may contribute to mystification of the analytic process itself. Particularly for those patients presenting with limited ego-capacity for reflection, impulsive or compulsive behaviors, inhibition of thinking processes, blunting of emotions, and rudimentary capacity for therapeutic cooperation, analyses of multiple frequencies can contribute to false compliance or resistance.

Clinically the frequency of sessions can be determined on an empirical basis. An analysand's ability to self-reflect occurs in the same measure as one's tolerance for emotional contact with the analyst and the unconscious. An optimal psychoanalysis understood as a maturational process is conducted initially for some clinical varieties of transference at reduced frequency, which is then expanded over time as the person's capacity for thoughtful self-reflection and interpersonal contact with the analyst develops. In this way actual unconscious processes are privileged over taken-for-granted therapeutics and addressed as an empirical reality.