Psychoanalytic and General Dynamic Conceptions of Theory and of Therapy—Differences and Similarities

A psychoanalyst who might be asked to give very briefly the essential principles of psychoanalysis could say that the recognition of the significance of childhood history for personality development, the teachings of transference and resistance and above all the establishment of the unconscious as an integral part of the human mind constitute the essence of psychoanalysis.

Freud (11) says in the "History of the Psychoanalytic Movement" that every psychiatrist who accepts the validity of these three doctrines may consider himself a psychoanalyst. At the present developmental state of psychoanalysis, the acceptance of the paramount significance of anxiety for the dynamic understanding of human personality should be added as the fourth requisite of an analyst.

In the Spring of 1952 a Conference on Psychiatric Education took place at Cornell University, under the auspices of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Association of Medical Colleges and the U. S. Public Health Service, Division of Mental Health (2). For the first time in the history of modern psychiatry an extensive statement on "Principles of Dynamic Psychiatry" was prepared for this conference by a joint commission of psychoanalysts and other dynamic psychiatrists. The three conceptions mentioned above have been recognized in this statement as forming an integral part of the operating principles in dynamic psychiatry.

While classical analysts as well as dynamically oriented psychiatrists accept these principles as to their dynamics, the various