Current issues in intensive psychotherapy

Seven current critical areas in intensive psychotherapy are discussed. (1) Social polemics, centering around the conflict between the humanistic and individualizing thrust of intensive psychotherapy, and the dehumanization of our current dark age; (2) training, where the resident is caught in a dilemma between techniques stressing fast relief and the possibilities of longer intensive therapy that stand in stark contrast to these techniques; (3) fundamental philosophical choices on the part of every practitioner that various types of therapy require; (4) delineation of intensive psychotherapy primarily defined as a modified form of psychoanalysis; (5) establishing the methodology of psychoanalysis and its derivative discipline, intensive psychotherapy; (6) use of intensive psychotherapy as the treatment of choice for pre-Oedipal disorders, severe character disorders, borderline patients, and certain others, such as some schizophrenic patients; (7) the collision between certain irreconcilable views such as those of Kohut and Kernberg that forces further choices on the therapist. This latter unresolved area could be placed in perspective by appeal to ego psychology which, as in the work of Blanck and Blanck, and others, is still a viable alternative and forms a critical area of investigation.