ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to address the question of how frequency can be related to intensity. Chaos theory developed recently in the natural sciences in an attempt to understand what happens when dynamic systems become unpredictable and turbulent. The chapter presents three concepts taken from chaos theory: the notion of iteration; the concept of the strange attractor; and scaling. It suggests that the effectiveness of contact arises from the appropriateness of the balance of disturbance and containment relative to the difficulties that the patient brings. It might also be taken as axiomatic in psychoanalytic psychotherapy that the difficulties that bring the patient for treatment will be experienced by both psychotherapist and patient in the transference as the treatment progresses. The chapter discusses the rationale for defining a particular number of sessions per week as the requirement for psychoanalysis of someone being trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist.
