ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an approach to intermittent, short-term therapy which has been found useful in a health maintenance setting that mandates limited mental health benefits. For many parents, this is the major work of therapy: coming to see their child’s misery or his miserable behavior as a part of life and not to be eradicated, even if it could be. So far as the issue of dependence on the therapist goes, our system mostly avoids the more intense aspects of the patient’s dependence on the therapist because the relationships between patient and therapist are less intense due to the intermittent, time-limited nature of the contacts. Some of our patients nonetheless develop intense transferences to particular providers. Action is the therapist’s necessity to begin with; he must know what he is doing and must be active in pursuit of whatever will be helpful with a given family.
