ABSTRACT
Freud has already pointed out that therapeutic success is often a hindrance to the thoroughness of the analysis. Freud’s technical principle that even during treatment one must not spare the patient the shocks of reality is compulsorily disregarded in individual cases, as, for instance, when treatment must be carried out at a distance from relatives. An indication for ‘discontinuous analysis’ may be due entirely to external conditions. Patients who are very busy or live at a distance, or such as have usually only a restricted amount of time and money at their disposal for the purposes of treatment, come every year only for one or two months at a time. One cannot say that the time between the individual working periods passes without leaving a trace on these patients; a certain subsequent assimilation, a working out of what has been learnt during the treatment, is sometimes undeniable.
