ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some ideas are explored about the ways in which we perceive time in daily life and in psychotherapy. It explores some aspects of the time dimension and the implications for psychotherapy. The few therapists who practise brief dynamic psychotherapy in this country do not feel entirely at ease with ft. On the part of health workers who deal with mentally disturbed patients, also, there can be many objections to forms of brief therapy. These objections are mostly borne out of misunderstandings and lack of any first-hand knowledge or experience of brief dynamic psychotherapy. The tendency to resist shortening psychotherapy is there in each of us therapists. Long-term, open-ended individual psychotherapy offers a most soothing and seductive combination of both time's arrow and time's cycle. Cost-effectiveness of psychotherapy has to be considered not only in terms of money, but also in terms of the time and energy the patient puts into it.
