Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

I write this letter to light a candle, not to curse the darkness. Dr. Marmor in the Twenty-Fifth Karen Horney Lecture (Vol. 37, No. 4) makes many points about the state of psychoanalysis and suggestions for change in the training of psychoanalysts, especially this point:

Actually, of course, an analysis is never really completed. A good analysis goes on beyond termination as a continuing self-analysis, with an ability to remain sensitive to one's unconscious motivations and ego-defenses and, hopefully, with a capacity to grow and change as long as one lives.

This point, I submit, is valid not only for the training analysand but for all who undertake the discipline.

The new parameter crying out for acceptance is that not only are Dr. Marmor's ideas valid for the training analysand, but for all analysands. If psychoanalysis is to fulfill its promise as a therapy for all mankind and not just the few, a way must be found to make doctor-patient relationship less time-consuming and expensive. If the virtue of achieving a sufficient awareness of one's hidden complexes and conflicts can be conveyed to the many who are capable of comprehending this intelligence (people no brighter than myself) and a feasible training program leading to ongoing self-analysis at termination can be devised, psychoanalysis may yet be saved. It may yet become the all-encompassing therapy that so many dedicated pioneers visualized for it.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me hasten to add that in advocating a psychoanalysis of shorter duration and less cost, I am in no way minimizing the essentiality of the psychoanalyst. In my opinion his need and value to mankind will be greater than ever. It will be a role, however, that will involve him with the many human beings who can benefit from his help rather than limiting it to the few as he is now doing. It is not because they have more to offer that other therapies are growing in prominence; it is because psychoanalysis, as now practiced, leaves