The Interrelationship Between Academic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis

Chairman Paul J. Fink introduced the panel as analysts who were also chairmen of departments of psychiatry and who were therefore in an excellent position to deal with the mutual concerns of academia and psychoanalysis. Dr. Fink had asked the panelists to cover the problems of junior faculty, of analytic institutes and academic departments, of residency curriculum and that of analytic training, and of how senior analysts fit into departments of psychiatry.

As an introduction to addressing the problems of junior faculty, Morton F. Reiser, in an effort to avoid excessive entanglement in the maze of issues, proposed a credo: Psychoanalysis, as a theory, research method, and mode of treatment constitutes a major sector of the mental health field in general and psychiatry in particular. Its sector lies mainly in the psychological sphere and offers to psychiatry a theory basic to the understanding of psycho-pathology and psychotherapy. Learning to understand and conduct psychotherapy includes learning analytic principles—as the only thoroughgoing theoretical rationale for psychotherapy—and acquiring therapeutic skills through practicums and supervision. Teaching of both psychoanalytic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy would ideally involve analysts at varying levels of experience and career development; e.g., senior analysts might best teach psychotherapy and candidates teach analytic theory, especially