ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses from the point of view of a psychotherapist working alone in private practice, with patients seen between one and three times a week, long and short term, who present with a wide range of problems. Therapists in the public or voluntary sector who work within financial and staffing constraints may envy the private practitioner who has greater freedom to make choices about whom to work with and for how long. In intensive analytic work the therapist will listen carefully to what the patient says with an assumption, based on an understanding of object relations theory, that what the patient says may express an unconscious aspect of the patient's self. Every psychotherapy patient has a general practitioner who may or may not be a significant person in the patient's life and therefore in the therapy. Many therapists belong to small professional networks in which boundaries can easily get broken or seriously muddled.
