ABSTRACT
The goal of psychoanalytic therapy is to initiate an optimal process of which the good/effective hour is a marker. Many hours may be seen (generally only retrospectively) as setting the stage for good/effective hours (the session with Mrs. D., for example, when she objected to my use of the word guarded). Many hours that follow a good/effective hour are devoted primarily to refinements, elaborations, generalizations of the insights of the good hour—the process of working through, the importance of which psychoanalysis has rightfully emphasized. Certainly, those hours dominated by working-through activities are important and are therapeutically effective, although I have not focused on them.
