After two years, a control group of patients who had received simple supportive counselling (emotional support and advice about practical difficulties) were no more symptomatic, and had spent less time in hospital and more time in employment, than those psychoanalytically treated patients who had persisted to the end. Naturalistic long-term follow-up studies of patients who had received intensive psychoanalytic therapy in specialist hospitals, published at about the same time, yielded equally discouraging results.
