ABSTRACT
The study to be described here is based on a total of twenty-one therapies, representing all those cases—with one exception—formally taken on by the team and either definitely terminated or definitely abandoned to long-term therapy between January 1955 (when the whole project started) and the end of January 1958. The one exception (the Transvestist) is a patient who was in fact formally taken on, but who was quite clearly unsuitable for psychotherapy of any kind, with whom the therapist could make no contact whatsoever, and who finally drifted away from therapy without apparent improvement after a total of about five sessions. This patient made so little impact on the members of the team that he was simply ignored or forgotten—he was never included in our interim reports and no attempt was made to follow him up. This is a scientific oversight for which I can only apologize. By January 1958, also, another patient (the Car Lady) was clearly expected to end up in long-term treatment (she had so far had twenty-two sessions and the prospect of termination seemed remote); but although this expectation was subsequently fulfilled, she has not been included. It has been necessary to draw a firm line somewhere, or the work would have been never-ending.
