As someone in psychoanalysis, I just had to respond to this. I think there are two quite separate aspects put together in this paragraph. 1) Why psychoanalysis takes so long and 2) why should someone continue or discontinue with a certain therapist/analyst.

I see great value in long-term psychoanalytic treatment. I agree that it might not be necessary for some, and perhaps even in most, cases. If the problems come from present day reality and the person just needs to learn to cope with them then I believe that many short-term goal-specific approaches are in order. However, when the present day problems actually come from a traumatic childhood, and not even from one or two specific traumatic events, but the whole situation was just inherently traumatic then I think it just takes time to get to the roots.

For me it has for instance taken more than 3.5 years 4 times a week and only now I'm starting to approach the traumatic emotions that have been completely split off of me. These emotions are not related to any specific memories, they just come like floating from somewhere. I just know that they come from a very early age because I just have no words describe what is happening to me when they come. And they all surface in the transference. I don't think they would be surfacing without transference, transference is the agent or catalyst that enables me to get to those feelings at all. And it has taken a long time. I don't think I would have gotten there without the long psychoanalytic work I have been doing with my T.

The second aspect is whether to continue with a certain therapist or not. Being a psychoanalyst doesn't necessarily mean that the therapist is good or suitable for a particular patient. Also, there are crappy psychoanalysts out there and if you're seeing one then it is definitely better to leave as soon as possible. I think that a very good test for any therapist/analyst is to test the defensiveness. If the therapist becomes defensive of anything you say then I would question the ability of that therapist to do deep work with patients. Also, not everyone fits with everyone. I believe there must be some basic, intuitive trust that this therapist can help me, even if I'm not really able to trust him yet.

I hope I did not sound too harsh but to my mind to say that the psychoanalytic model is outdated shows just misunderstanding what psychoanalysis is really about. I'm sorry though that the analyst you saw was rigid in his methods and views. This is the problem of a particular person and not the therapeutic model per se.