[Introduction to brief psychotherapy with a psychoanalytic orientation]

Abstract

Introductory paper describing succinctly the technique of brief analytical psychotherapy as developed by one of the authors in Lausanne. The author tries to demonstrate that a single modification of the setting in comparison with psychoanalysis bends the therapeutic relationship towards a stressing of the importance of the "hic et nunc". If this phenomenon comes clearly to the therapist and is adequately interpreted, a "natural" associative process develops where the analysis of transference and countertransference takes a primordial place. This process is comparable with psychoanalysis as far as certain transference movements are concerned, but the working mechanisms are different.