Time-limited psychotherapy

1. Introduction

Version followed: James Mann's Time-Limited Psychotherapy (TLP) as in Mann, Time-Limited Psychotherapy (1973) and Mann & Goldman, A Casebook in Time-Limited Psychotherapy (1982; APPI reprint 1987). Session-level procedure is taken from Mann's own later summary chapter (Mann 1991, in Crits-Christoph & Barber, eds.), the only primary text drawn on in full. Where the 1991 chapter departs from the usual account of the 1973 book, both are given and labelled. [source: Mann 1991 via IPI e-book]

TLP is a psychodynamic treatment of exactly 12 weekly sessions. The end date is set before treatment begins. Mann began developing it in 1962 at Boston University's outpatient clinic. It is organised around one central issue: the therapist's statement of the patient's present and chronically endured pain about the self. Mann's theory is that every treatment ending is a separation and a loss. Open-ended therapy feeds "child time", the unconscious sense that time is endless and that total fulfilment will come. A fixed, known end sets that against real (categorical) time. The patient then re-lives, inside the relationship with the therapist, the ambivalence and loss that keep the negative self-image alive. Working this through in the transference, and ending on schedule, lets the patient experience a separation that is mastered rather than traumatic. Mann takes the patient leaving sad, not depressed, as the sign of success. Relief of symptoms is a by-product, not the goal. [source: Mann 1991; Holmes 2014; psychology.town summary]

2. Framework

Format. 1 to 3 (sometimes 4) evaluation interviews come first and are not counted. Then exactly 12 sessions follow, weekly, 45 to 50 minutes each. Mann avoided twice-weekly sessions because each session carries a heavy affective load. At the outset the patient is told the number of sessions, their length and the calendar date of session 12. The patient therefore knows the start, the midpoint (session 6) and the end. [source: Mann 1991] The end date is fixed. Sources describe no extension within the contract. [source: Mann 1991; Groves & Blais]

Phase 0: Evaluation (interviews 1 to 3 or 4).

Goals: take the history, decide suitability, formulate the central issue.
Interview 1 is about an hour of history-taking. Interview 2 clarifies details. The central issue is usually offered at interview 3.
If the central issue is still unclear after 3 to 4 interviews, suspect more severe pathology and reconsider TLP. [source: Mann 1991]
[uncertain] Some secondary summaries say the central issue is presented at the start of session 1 rather than at the end of the evaluation. This guide follows Mann 1991 (offered at the end of the evaluation, then carried into session 1). [source: psychology.town vs Mann 1991]

Selection criteria (gate into treatment).

Indications:
- adequate ego strength;
- capacity for rapid affective involvement and rapid disengagement;
- capacity to tolerate loss, judged from how the patient has handled past losses.
Suitable groups:
- anxiety, hysterical, depressive and obsessional presentations, and characterological problems;
- maturational crises, since every life transition is experienced as a loss;
- patients aware of their dependency or made dependent by too much previous treatment;
- mildly narcissistic patients.
Contraindications:
- schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, schizoid character;
- obsessional character with heavy isolation and intellectualisation. Mann's phrase: "Working with them is like writing on water" [source: Mann 1991].
- Mann also lists some serious psychosomatic conditions as needing long-term work: rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, regional enteritis, severe asthma.
- Severely narcissistic patients may reject TLP as too short.
- Borderline patients with effective neurotic defences may do TLP and then be referred on. [source: Mann 1991]

Phase 1: Honeymoon (about sessions 1 to 4).

Patient: rapid positive or idealising transference, a flood of material, early symptom relief.
Therapist: keeps every topic tied to the central issue and deepens its history.
Marker for the next phase: disillusionment begins and symptoms or complaints return. Groves & Blais place this around session 4. [source: Mann 1991; Groves & Blais]

Phase 2: Ambivalence (about sessions 5 to 8, midpoint at 6).

Patient:
- goes quiet about the time left;
- positive feeling turns ambivalent;
- says "nothing has changed";
- after session 6, lateness, absence or negative transference may appear.
Therapist: does not respond anxiously; encourages elaboration of the ambivalence and links it to earlier separations and to the central issue. [source: Mann 1991; Groves & Blais]
Marker for the next phase: the calendar. By sessions 9 to 10 the end must be on the table. If the patient has not raised it, the therapist does. [source: Mann 1991]

Phase 3: Termination (last 3 to 4 sessions, about 9 to 12).

The ending is the explicit subject of the work.
Feelings about loss, rejection and separation are interpreted as the central issue happening in the room, and are linked to present others and to the past.
Criterion for a good ending: the patient leaves sad, without self-injury, with a less punishing view of the self. [source: Mann 1991]

After the 12 sessions. No formal follow-up schedule. The patient is advised to wait about six months to consolidate before getting in touch. Patients may return later for follow-up or new issues, and some are referred for longer-term work. [source: Mann 1991]

3. Guiding principles

Time is the agent of change, not just the frame. [source: Mann 1991; Groves & Blais] In practice: mention the end date, count sessions and work with reactions to the limit as core content.
Child time vs adult (categorical) time; existential vs categorical time. [source: Mann 1991; psychology.town] In practice: read wishes for endless, magical care as child time, and gently set the calendar against them.
The limit is fixed and stated at the outset: 12 sessions, known end date. [source: Mann 1991] In practice: give the date, never move it, and never offer "a few more" inside the contract.
One central issue governs everything. [source: Mann 1991] In practice: every intervention should make sense in the central issue's language. If it doesn't, redirect.
The central issue is about the self, chronic and present, and carries feeling. It is not a complaint, a symptom or a conflict with other people. [source: Mann 1991] In practice: phrase it as "how you have always felt about yourself", never as "your problem with your husband".
Acknowledge the patient's strength and effort first. [source: Mann 1991 example; psychology.town] In practice: start the formulation with what the patient has done well despite the pain, which builds the alliance and pre-empts shame.
Separation and loss are universal; the aim is to tolerate them without undue damage to self-regard. [source: psychology.town; Mann 1991] In practice: treat every ending, absence and break as material about separation.
Universal conflicts frame the formulation. In the 1973 version these are independence vs dependence, activity vs passivity, adequate vs diminished self-esteem, and unresolved or delayed grief. [uncertain: attributed to Mann 1973 in the version brief and the secondary literature. Mann 1991 instead lists five basic feelings (glad, sad, mad, frightened, guilty) from which chronic pain derives.] In practice: check which conflict and which basic feeling the patient's chronic pain belongs to.
"Measured dependence with an assured end." [source: Mann 1991] In practice: allow the patient to depend on you fully, because the end is guaranteed. Do not hold back warmth to prevent attachment.
The therapist is active. [source: Mann 1991] In practice: interrupt digressions, steer back to earlier relevant material, and raise the end if the patient avoids it.
Interpret in the language of experience, not drives. [source: Mann 1991] In practice: say "you felt small and pushed aside", not oedipal or castration terms.
Use the transference triangle. [source: Mann 1991] In practice: link the feeling with you, with present important people, and with past figures.
"Relief of symptoms is not the goal of treatment." [source: Mann 1991] In practice: do not chase symptom change in the middle phase. Track the self-image and affect around the ending.
A good ending is a sad one. [source: Mann 1991] In practice: expect and welcome sadness at the end. Do not soften it with offers of continuation.
The therapist must manage their own reactions to time and endings. [source: Mann 1991] In practice: use supervision or peer formulation and personal therapy; watch for labelling patients "unsuitable" to avoid the stance.

4. Intervention inventory

TLP is a manual-light psychodynamic method. Mann describes a stance, a structure and a few precise operations, not a menu of exercises. Mann describes no homework, worksheets or structured exercises, and none are invented here. [source: Mann 1991] Each item is tagged by source. Most come from Mann 1991, item 12 rests mainly on Groves & Blais, and steps marked [synthesis] are this guide's own. All example language is illustrative unless quoted and cited.

1. Evaluation interview focused on recurrent pain about the self

Purpose / when: Interviews 1 to 3 (or 4), before the contract. Two aims: find the central issue and judge suitability. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. Interview 1: take a full history in about one hour, covering the presenting complaint, its timeline and the patient's life story.
2. Mark painful episodes across the lifespan. Look for events that are different on the surface but felt as the same.
3. Interview 2: clarify gaps and dates, and how the patient felt in each episode.
4. Check the loss history: separations, deaths, moves, transitions, and how the patient grieved and recovered. This is the main suitability marker. [source: Mann 1991]
5. Note how fast the patient engages emotionally with you and how they leave each interview (rapid involvement and disengagement).
6. Remember that the evaluation is already part of the relationship: you are both "sizing each other up". [source: Mann 1991]
Example language (illustrative): "When that happened, how did you feel about yourself, not about him, about you?" / "You've described three times in your life when someone else took charge of you. Did those feel alike?"
Watch for:
- A patient who can name feelings, link episodes and show affect in the room is a good sign.
- Flat, intellectualised accounts with no affective thread suggest exclusion (see contraindications).
- An issue still unclear after 3 to 4 interviews suggests more severe pathology. [source: Mann 1991]

2. The formulating question (silent)

Purpose / when: The therapist's private tool during evaluation for turning history into a central issue. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. For each painful event, ask yourself how this person must have felt about themselves then. This is a paraphrase of Mann's guiding question.
2. Name the feeling in basic terms: glad, sad, mad, frightened or guilty (Mann 1991's five basic feelings).
3. Look for the same self-feeling recurring across events; this is the chronic pain.
4. Optionally, check it against the four universal conflicts: dependence/independence, activity/passivity, self-esteem, unresolved grief. [uncertain: 1973 framing]
5. Empathise without merging. Mann warns against "becoming lost in identification with the patient". [source: Mann 1991]
Example language: None. This is internal.
Watch for: A formulation phrased as a complaint or as conflict with others means you have not yet reached the self-feeling. Rework it.

3. Writing the central issue statement

Purpose / when: Before the contract session. It becomes the template for every later interpretation and for the transference. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. Open with a real strength or effort the patient has shown. [source: Mann 1991 example; psychology.town]
2. Add the time dimension: "now and always". The pain is chronic and present.
3. Name the dominant feeling and the negative self-image, such as feeling controlled and helpless, or unwanted.
4. Leave out complaints, symptoms, diagnoses and conflicts with named others. [source: Mann 1991]
5. Keep it to one or two sentences in plain, affective language.
Model shape: Mann's published example has this form: an acknowledgement ("You are a woman of recognized ability and talent…"), then what has troubled her "now and always", then a self-feeling of being controlled and helpless. [source: Mann 1991, paraphrased]
Example language (illustrative): "You have worked hard and looked after everyone, yet what hurts now, and always has, is feeling that you don't really count."
Watch for:
- The patient's face and affect when you deliver it. A moved, recognising response confirms it.
- A purely cognitive "yes, that's right" may mean you are not there yet.

4. Presenting the central issue and inviting a response

Purpose / when: End of the evaluation (usually interview 3). Offered as your view, which the patient may accept, qualify or reject. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. Say it slowly. Pause.
2. Ask for the patient's reaction.
3. If the patient says that is not why they came, ask whether something more important should be looked at. Mann reports patients have always said no, and rejection is rare. [source: Mann 1991]
4. If acceptance is hesitant, explore the hesitation.
5. Treat over-enthusiastic acceptance as possible compliance aimed at securing the therapist, and note it as early transference. [source: Mann 1991]
Example language (illustrative): "Here is how I understand what has troubled you. Tell me how that sits with you, including anything that doesn't fit."
Watch for:
- Tears or emotional recognition are a good sign. Mann's case patient corroborated it and feared he would think less of her. [source: Mann 1991]
- If it is rejected, revise once. Persistent failure to agree a central issue is a selection signal.

5. Setting the time contract

Purpose / when: Directly after agreeing the central issue, before session 1. It turns time into the working material. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. State: 12 sessions, weekly, 45 to 50 minutes.
2. Give the day and time slot.
3. Give the calendar date of session 12, and if you like the date of session 6.
4. Do not offer contingency extensions.
5. [synthesis] Have the patient write the dates down in front of you. Say how missed sessions will be handled (see section 5). Mann 1991 does not address this.
Example language (illustrative): "We'll meet twelve times, Tuesdays at 4, for fifty minutes. Our last meeting will be on the 14th of March."
Watch for:
- Protest ("Is that enough?") is early material. Turn it back to the patient (item 11).
- Over-easy agreement may hide child-time denial that the end will really come.

6. Holding the focus: active redirection

Purpose / when: All phases, mostly 1 to 8. Keeps 12 sessions from being spent on detail. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. When the patient drifts into unconnected detail, interrupt.
2. Take them back to an earlier relevant item, ideally one with affect.
3. Link the new material to the central issue where possible.
4. After a very heavy session, allow a short let-up. Mann allows a brief breather of about 10 to 15 minutes; [uncertain] whether this means within the session or a lighter next session is unclear in the summary obtained.
Example language (illustrative): "Let me stop you there. A few minutes ago you mentioned your sister's wedding and your voice changed. Let's go back to that."
Watch for: The patient returning to affect-laden material after redirection. Repeated drift after redirection is resistance (item 12).

7. Listening for the self-feeling behind events

Purpose / when: Every session. This is how the central issue is deepened rather than repeated. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. While the patient narrates, track how they felt about themselves, not what happened.
2. Reflect that feeling back.
3. Show how it repeats across past and present, using the central issue's words.
Example language (illustrative): "Underneath the anger at your boss I hear that same old feeling, that you don't really count."
Watch for: The patient starts doing this themselves ("there it is again, I felt like nobody"). That is a sign of internalisation.

8. Working with midpoint ambivalence

Purpose / when: Around session 6, when the honeymoon fades. [source: Mann 1991; Groves & Blais]
Signs:
- silence about the time left;
- "nothing has changed";
- returning symptoms;
- cooler feeling toward the therapist.
Steps:
1. Do not get anxious, defend the treatment or speed up. [source: Mann 1991]
2. Name the shift in feeling and invite more of it.
3. Link the ambivalence to the approaching end. Groves & Blais: first interpret the avoidance of the time limit and of feelings about separation.
4. Link it to earlier separations in the history. [source: Mann 1991]
5. Frame it in the central issue's language.
Example language (illustrative): "Today it feels as if this hasn't helped at all. We're halfway, and neither of us has mentioned it. I wonder if part of you is already bracing to be let down, the way you were when your father left."
Watch for:
- Deepening material such as memories, dreams and tears means it is working. Mann's case patient felt "like an orphan" and cried at this point. [source: Mann 1991]
- Lateness or absence: see item 12.

9. Timekeeping: raising the end

Purpose / when: Through all phases, and essential by sessions 9 to 10. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. Track whether the patient mentions the number of sessions left.
2. If they have not raised the end by sessions 9 to 10, raise it yourself. Mann's example is simply asking how many meetings remain. [source: Mann 1991]
3. From then on, the end is the explicit topic of the last 3 to 4 sessions.
4. [synthesis] From the midpoint on, it can help to say the count briefly at the start of a session ("this is our seventh"). This is consistent with the therapist acting as timekeeper [source: Groves & Blais], but Mann gives no script for it.
Example language (illustrative): "How many meetings do we have left?" / "You haven't mentioned that we have three more times together."
Watch for: Surprise or denial ("is it already?") is child time showing, and it is material to explore.

10. Triangular transference interpretation in central-issue language

Purpose / when: The main interpretive act, most of all in termination. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. Notice the feeling toward you, such as being let go, rejected or controlled by the fixed end.
2. Name it.
3. Link it to important people now.
4. Link it to its origins in the past. This is "the familiar triangular configuration". [source: Mann 1991]
5. Phrase all three in the central issue's words, not drive terms. [source: Mann 1991]
Example language (illustrative): "You're angry that I'm ending this on a date I chose. That's the same helpless feeling you have when your husband decides for you, and the one you had when your mother sent you away to school. Once again someone else controls when you have to let go."
Watch for:
- Affective recognition, then new memories.
- Intellectual agreement without feeling means the link is premature or too abstract.

11. Turning the "Is twelve enough?" question back

Purpose / when: At contracting or whenever the patient challenges the limit. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. Do not justify or reassure.
2. Ask what the patient imagines would happen if twelve were not enough.
3. Explore the fear and wish behind the question and link it to the central issue.
Example language (illustrative): "What do you imagine happens to you if twelve isn't enough?"
Watch for: The answer usually shows the expected abandonment or self-blame, which belongs to the central issue.

12. Interpreting resistance after the midpoint

Purpose / when: After session 6, when lateness, missed sessions, negative transference or a flight back into symptoms appear. [source: Groves & Blais; Mann 1991 on ambivalence]
Steps:
1. Respond with empathy, not confrontation.
2. Note the behaviour.
3. Link it to the coming separation and to the central issue.
4. Check your own countertransference: irritation, guilt, wish to extend. [source: Groves & Blais]
Example language (illustrative): "You were twenty minutes late, two weeks before we stop. Maybe it feels safer to leave a little early than to be left."
Watch for: Attendance and openness come back after the interpretation.

13. Dream interpretation in central-issue terms

Purpose / when: Whenever the patient brings a dream. These are frequent around the midpoint and at termination. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. Ask for associations.
2. Read the dream as a statement about the self-feeling and about the ending.
3. Do not use drive language.
4. Link it to the therapist and the end date.
Example from source (paraphrased):
- Mann's case patient dreamed of bleeding to death while a doctor classmate was unavailable. This was read as the ending and the unavailable helper.
- A recurring dream of leaving her parents' bedroom through a window was read as separation. [source: Mann 1991]
Example language (illustrative): "A doctor who isn't there when you're losing so much. We have two meetings left."
Watch for: The dream-feeling linking to the room in a way the patient recognises.

14. Working through termination and the final session

Purpose / when: About sessions 9 to 12. To experience and survive a planned loss, and to leave with a less punishing self-image. [source: Mann 1991; psychology.town]
Steps:
1. Keep the end as the explicit topic.
2. Invite sadness, anger, the wish to continue and fears of being forgotten, and interpret them triangularly (item 10).
3. Do not offer extension or more sessions. Hold the date.
4. Review the central issue together: what the patient now sees about the old self-feeling and what they can now choose. Mann speaks of "awareness of choices" in place of automatic responses. [source: Mann 1991]
5. Accept the patient's anger and ambivalence honestly. [source: Groves & Blais]
6. In the last session, acknowledge the relationship and the loss directly.
7. If asked about contact, advise waiting about six months before getting in touch. [source: Mann 1991]
Example language (illustrative): "This is our last meeting. It's sad to stop, and it's meant to be. You're leaving this time; you're not being sent away."
Watch for:
- Mann's criterion: "a satisfactory termination is one in which the patient leaves treatment feeling sad". [source: Mann 1991]
- Sad, not depressed, and without self-injury.
- Mann's case patient ended feeling liked and "not crazy", and could let her son go. [source: Mann 1991]

15. Post-treatment return and referral

Purpose / when: After session 12. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. Leave the door open for a later contact, after about six months.
2. Treat later contacts as follow-up or a new issue, not as continuing the old contract.
3. Refer patients with borderline features who used TLP well to long-term treatment if indicated.
Watch for: A crisis call straight after ending. See section 5.

16. Therapist self-monitoring: formulation support and countertransference

Purpose / when: Throughout. Mann treats therapist reluctance as the main threat to the method. [source: Mann 1991]
Steps:
1. Formulate the central issue with experienced peers when possible, and use weekly supervision. [source: Mann 1991]
2. Watch for:
  - anxiety about the new stance;
  - discomfort announcing the end;
  - a wish to extend;
  - declaring patients "unsuitable" as a defence;
  - your own negative self-image pulling you into collusion. [source: Mann 1991]
3. Mann recommends personal therapy or analysis and long-term experience first. [source: Mann 1991]
Example language: None. This is internal.
Watch for: Urges to add "just one more" session, or avoiding the date, usually show the therapist's own difficulty with separation.

5. Handling problems

Mann 1991 addresses only some of these: ambivalence, rejection of the central issue, "is twelve enough?", therapist reluctance, and recontact. Everything else here is labelled [synthesis]: it is derived from TLP's principles and is not stated in the primary sources.

Central issue rejected or does not land.

Ask whether something more important should be examined. Mann reports patients rarely reject it. [source: Mann 1991]
[synthesis] Revise once, with the patient's own words.
If no central issue can be agreed after 3 to 4 evaluation interviews, do not start TLP. Consider more severe pathology and an open-ended or different treatment. [source: Mann 1991]

Over-compliant acceptance. Treat it as an adaptive mode: pleasing you to secure the relationship. [source: Mann 1991] [synthesis] Name it gently in the honeymoon and link it to the central issue if it fits, for example "you've always had to be the easy one".

Stuck middle: "nothing has changed", returning symptoms.

This is the expected ambivalence, not failure. [source: Mann 1991]
Do not get anxious or add techniques.
Interpret it as protection against the coming loss and link it to earlier separations (items 8 and 10).
Remember symptom relief is not the goal. [source: Mann 1991]

Resistance: lateness, missed sessions, digressions, intellectualising.

Respond with empathy and link the behaviour to the ending and the central issue (item 12). [source: Groves & Blais]
Interrupt digressions (item 6). [source: Mann 1991]
Persistent isolation of affect suggests misselection, given Mann's "writing on water" warning.

Missed or cancelled sessions. [synthesis] [uncertain: Mann 1991 does not say] The end date is fixed, so the safest reading of the model is that a missed session is not added on at the end. Agree this at contracting. Interpret the absence as part of the separation theme. If a true emergency (illness, bereavement) makes the date impossible, renegotiate openly once, and treat the renegotiation itself as material.

Requests to extend or to "just check in" after the end.

Hold the date. Explore the request as the central issue in the transference (items 10 and 14).
Mann advises waiting about six months before getting in touch. [source: Mann 1991]
[synthesis] Make clear that a later contact is possible. This separates "ending" from "abandonment".

Anger at the therapist or the limit (rupture).

Accept it honestly. [source: Groves & Blais]
Interpret it triangularly (item 10).
[synthesis] Repair by acknowledging that the limit is your decision and really does frustrate the patient, rather than softening the limit. The point is for the patient to be angry with someone who stays steady and still ends, which is the corrective separation.

Overwhelm: flooding affect, very heavy sessions.

Mann allows a brief let-up after a difficult session. [source: Mann 1991; uncertain about the exact form]
Keep weekly spacing; do not add sessions. [source: Mann 1991]
[synthesis] Slow down, focus on present-day self-feeling, and restate the central issue as a containing frame.

Depression rather than sadness at the end; suicidal ideation; deterioration.

[synthesis] Mann's target is sadness without self-injury. [source: Mann 1991] If clinical depression, self-harm or suicidal ideation appear, the TLP contract does not override safety.
Carry out a standard suicide risk assessment and safety planning under your service's protocol.
Arrange appropriate care, which may mean continuing or referring beyond session 12 as a clinical decision.
Say plainly that this is a change of treatment, not an extension of TLP.

Hidden severe pathology emerges (psychotic features, severe borderline dynamics, dissociation). [synthesis] Refer or move to longer-term treatment, consistent with Mann's exclusions. Borderline patients with effective defences may finish TLP and then be referred. [source: Mann 1991]

Severely narcissistic patient devalues the brief format. Expect them to reject TLP as too brief. [source: Mann 1991] [synthesis] If this happens in evaluation, do not argue; offer another treatment.

Therapist difficulties.

Signs:
- reluctance to announce the end;
- wish to extend;
- calling patients "unsuitable" defensively;
- your own negative self-image resonating with the patient's. [source: Mann 1991]
Remedies:
- peer formulation, weekly supervision, personal therapy;
- grounding in long-term dynamic work. [source: Mann 1991]

Patient wants homework, skills or symptom techniques. [synthesis] TLP gives none. Acknowledge the wish and explore what it says about the central issue ("you feel you must be given something to manage on your own"). If skills are clinically essential, consider a different modality rather than mixing.

Medication. Mann remarks that anti-anxiety drugs alter how subjective time is felt, but gives no prescribing guidance. [source: Mann 1991] [synthesis] Coordinate with the prescriber, and notice the patient's use of medication as material about dependence.

Sources

Sources:

Not read:

The PMC review How Do Time Limits Affect Our Psychotherapies? is not drawn on here.
A University of Pretoria dissertation on Mann's TLP (Havenga 2008) was not reachable.

Books cited:

Mann, J. (1973). Time-Limited Psychotherapy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [uncertain: lending-restricted]
Mann, J., & Goldman, R. (1982). A Casebook in Time-Limited Psychotherapy. New York: McGraw-Hill (reprinted Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1987). [uncertain]
Mann, J. (1991). Time-limited psychotherapy. In P. Crits-Christoph & J. P. Barber (Eds.), Handbook of Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.
Groves, J. E., & Blais, M. A. Brief psychotherapy: an overview. In Massachusetts General Hospital Comprehensive Clinical Psychiatry.
Rasmussen, A., & Messer, S. B. (1986). A comparison and critique of Mann's time-limited psychotherapy and Davanloo's short-term dynamic psychotherapy. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 50, 163–184.
Shefler, G., Dasberg, H., & Ben-Shakhar, G. (1995). Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63(4), 585–593.

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