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In this essay I will discuss the pioneering work of my father, Dimitrios Moraitis, who in 1928 published a psychoanalytic book in Athens under the title (rendered in English) Psychoanalysis and Its Application to Education.
Pioneering in intellectual fields is a complicated educational process of introducing new ways of thinking in an unfamiliar setting to an uninformed or misinformed audience. Pioneers are educators who often must move beyond the confines of their consultation room or classroom and pursue an unfamiliar path, usually without preparation or a set of instructions.
In the early stages of the psychoanalytic movement, psychoanalysts were all pioneers, Freud being of course the most important one. They joined the intellectual avant-garde of their time and, with great enthusiasm, zeal, and conviction, made concerted efforts to educate their audiences to the potential of psychoanalysis for facilitating psychological growth in those in treatment and in the culture more generally.
As a result of these efforts, psychoanalysis in Europe flourished for several years, until the Nazis destroyed everything. The diaspora that followed the exodus of psychoanalysts from Europe made them once again pioneers, now in their host countries. In the United States after the war, psychoanalysis experienced a meteoric rise that eventually brought this pioneering spirit to a halt. Instead of efforts to recruit new people to the profession, gatekeeping policies were established to exclude those perceived as unqualified.
Today the situation has changed again. It has now become abundantly clear that the “golden days” of psychoanalysis in the United States are over. Patients are hard to find, and so are candidates. Further, a high