Session Frequency or Working Model? An Investigation into How We Can Think of the Difference Between ‘Intensive’ and ‘Non-Intensive’ Work Using the Comparative Clinical Method

Abstract

This is an exploratory account of an applied clinical method, the Comparative Clinical Method, used to address a specific question: how can we best think of the difference between intensive and non-intensive analytic work? Normally, it is session frequency that is taken as a determining difference, as a marker of a different approach or method being employed. In our investigation, which consisted of the three authors presenting examples of their clinical work to each other, we did not find the intensive and non-intensive work of each author to demonstrate clear and easily defined differences in method or technique. Instead, we found more evidence of each author adopting a coherent and consistent approach, based on an underlying and implicit working model, across their intensive and non-intensive work. We conclude from this that the differences between intensive and non-intensive work are best explored by encouraging more conceptually rigorous and clinically specific descriptions of the different kinds of analytic assumptions and methods employed in ordinary analytic clinical work.