The Title of this symposium has two facets, both of which deserve some clarification. The term psychoanalyst is often used to refer simply to those who limit their practices to a rather rigidly defined technique of psychotherapeutic practice. Such physicians often tend to isolate themselves from the newer developments in community psychiatry, almost as though these developments might somehow endanger the pristine purity of their own work. I believe, however, that it is a serious limitation for the psychoanalyst to define his professional identity only within the specific psychotherapeutic function of psychoanalysis. Indeed, the special merits of this form of therapy over other forms of dynamic psychotherapy, as well as its specific indications and contraindications, still remain to be adjudicated by rigorous and controlled research studies. There is little question, however, that the understanding that the psychoanalyst brings