Freud on Lay Analysts

On July 18, 1928 there appeared in the Neue Freie Presse, Vienna, an interesting letter by Freud touching on the subject of lay analysts. Mr. Milton Wexler, Acting Chief of the Psychological Service at the Winter General Hospital in Topeka called Dr. Karl Menninger's attention to this letter. Dr. Menninger sent it along to us since he felt it might be of interest to our readers. Here it is:

“TO THE EDITOR:

An article in your paper dated July 15th concerning my pupil, Dr. Th. Reik, and particularly a paragraph of this article which is headed ‘Communications from Psychoanalytic Circles,’ contains a passage on which I would like to make some comments of a corrective nature. It reads as follows:

‘--- in later years he became convinced that Dr. Reik, who had acquired a generally good reputation through his philosophical and psychological writings, possessed a greater talent for psychoanalysis than the physicians who followed the Freudian School. He entrusted the most difficult cases to him and to his daughter, Anna, and they proved themselves especially capable in the difficult technique of psychoanalysis.’

I believe Dr. Reik would be the first one to repudiate this construction of our relationship. It is correct, however, that I made use of his ability in relation to particularly difficult cases, but only for those in whom the symptoms were far removed from the somatic sphere. I have never failed to inform the patient that he was not a physician but a psychologist.

My daughter, Anna, has turned her attention towards the pedagogical analysis of children and adolescents. I have never assigned to her a case of serious neurotic disturbance in an adult. The only case of illness with severe symptoms bordering on a psychiatric problem which she has treated has, by its fully successful outcome, justified the medical permission extended.