Someone was asking me the other day how long therapy should last. At the time I said it should last as long as it is working. And then I went on as i usually do to say a lot more about that. Because no one can determine how long therapy goes on except a given patient and therapist working together to decide. Certainly managed care companies can't really know, though they can set arbitrary limits.
Yesterday I was poking around in some old links -- that's the kind of thing I do when I have some bigger idea or issue simmering away on my mental back burner -- and ran across a site by Jean Hantman, who I used to enjoy reading when there was an active listserv for psychoanalytic studies. Now she is on the psychoanalysis side of depth psychology, which means we have somewhat different notions about some things, but I always find her interesting reading and her ideas to be at least provocative. Here;s what she says about what is enough therapy: