ABSTRACT
Historically, the concept of focus has been at the core of critiques about lengthy psychotherapy treatments. Treatments with clear focus have more successful outcome than those without, across a variety of modalities. Some therapists believe focus is incompatible with free association, an indispensable diagnostic tool in psychodynamic treatments. With core conflictual relationship theme therapy, therapist's consistent focus on specific relationship themes predicted positive outcome. The latter point of view has been championed by Herb Schlesinger, who believes that keeping a focus to treatment is essential to therapeutic progress in psychoanalysis. Even the experiential therapist Mahrer so committed to enabling deep potentialities to emerge from within his patient that he steadfastly rejects such interventions as diagnosing before treating; checking for suicidal tendencies in depressed patients, and being careful with fragile psychotic patients nevertheless espouses focus in his work. Modern psychodynamic thinking alleviates concerns about the negative impact focus might have on the transference.
