Time in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Psychodynamic short-term versus long-term therapy

This article presents an overview on the status of the literature on the factor time in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Initially two naturalistic, retrospective studies are described, then the dose-effect model is explained and compared to the good-enough level model. The effectiveness of psychodynamic short-term and long-term therapy is illustrated by several meta-analyses, whereby inpatient psychotherapy is included as a special form of short-term therapy. It emerges that both forms of psychodynamic psychotherapy, short-term and long-term therapy are actually successful but that severely, chronically ill patients need a more time-intensive long-term therapy. Finally, using the results of the Munich psychotherapy study it is shown that time-intensive analytical psychotherapy has the most sustainable success but that in addition to the factor time, the treatment technique also plays a role.