The techniques of talk-it-out psychotherapy have changed slowly but significantly since Sigmund Freud first stretched patients out on a couch. The Freudian "50-Minute Hour," originally restricted to patient and analyst, has led to two-hour sessions of group therapy in which half a dozen or so patients, all with similar symptoms, get together with the same therapist. Now Los Angeles' Dr. George R. Bach, 51, a Latvian-born Ph.D. psychologist, has pushed the trend —both in time and numbers—about as far as it can reasonably go. He has enlarged the cast to a dozen or more "participants," and he keeps the group session going, marathon style, for 30 to 48 hours in what he calls "300-year weekends." No one is allowed to leave the room except for bathroom needs or to get food and coffee from the dining-room buffet; the only sleep consists of naps taken in a corner. Time, Friday, Jul. 09, 196
(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,833926-1,00.html#ixzz13pdFtKte)