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The stuff of the world is mind-stuff.
History is shaped by politics, and this is certainly true for the history of psychoanalysis. Theoretical and organizational schisms have led to heated debate about what psychoanalysis is, the “best” way to practice it, and the exclusion of those who do not do it the “right” way (cf. Perron, 2002). These issues are particularly important in a paper on session frequency and duration and their relation to outcome. For many of us this topic has a very visceral, or “in-your-face” quality. My institutional affiliations and experience from both sides of the couch, as well as my own research on frequency/duration and outcome (see Freedman, Hoffenberg, Vorus, & Frosch, 1999), lead me to believe that the combination of high frequency and longer duration (open-ended) treatment is the most effective form of psychoanalysis. My gathering together of “facts” in this paper is always embedded in this subjective context. This threatens to politicize a topic that is difficult enough in its own right.
In recent years there has been a veritable avalanche of psychoanalytic outcome research (Fonagy, 2002). To approach a paper on session frequency/duration and outcome feels quite overwhelming, even without the ever-present “political issues.” On an