ABSTRACT
I have been influenced in this regard by my psychoanalytic training, which required me to participate and to see my adult patients five times a week. With child analytic patients, the minimum was four times a week, so that I soon got accustomed to seeing people on a much more frequent basis than had been possible following the usual outpatient pattern of a child guidance center. Then, the only time I changed a child's meetings to twice a week was in response to a worsening of the child's symptoms and a feeling that the therapeutic dosage needed to be increased. My more recent experience with inpatient treatment has also served to modify my sense of what is best in regard to frequency, since the hospital we serve is one in which patients stay for a relatively short time (from less than a week to three or four months). In order to accomplish even limited goals with individuals referred for art therapy, it has been essential to see them at least twice a week, sometimes more often. The latter has frequently occurred because the patient was not able to tolerate long sessions at first, needing to start perhaps at 15 minutes and to gradually lengthen meetings to a half or a whole hour.
