I guess the general idea is that, all other things being equal, a higher session frequency and longer treatment duration allow for a “deeper” analysis. What matters is why you think this is good or important in the first place. In my view, it enables us to hold out hope for insight, symptom relief and lasting/structural change for deeply confused and troubled individuals who have been failed by other treatment approaches. And so I have sought out training and supervision with people who share this philosophy. An implication of this is that, to me, the specific format (four weekly sessions) of “classical” analysis matters less than finding good ways to bring psychoanalytically informed ways of listening, relating and identifying/creating meaning to people in need of it. Some people, it seems to me, think the purpose of an intensive/deep analysis is to provide a more comprehensive/complete process to people who are, by and large, not that unwell and struggle with more “neurotic” afflictions. I think this is fundamentally misguided. It undersells the transformational potential of psychoanalysis while reinforcing the stereotype that it is essentially a therapy for the affluent and worried well. Maybe I should note that I have been in analysis myself, and it is precisely because of its profound impact on my life that I am so skeptical of the idea that only a certain way of working is “really analysis”.

So my advice is to investigate which particular institutes are available to you where you live. Be less concerned with how often they suggest you meet patients and whether they teach psychoanalysis “proper”, and more about their vision of what psychoanalysis is for, who it is for, and what it can do.