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Clinical psychoanalysis is a major part of the identity of the psychoanalyst, especially in the USA where psychoanalysis dominated the practice of psychiatry for many decades, and this has in many ways limited the scope of the field, based understandably on where our income comes from. Many analysts, including ourselves, have found that working in communities can generate referrals for treatment, especially if our community work is free of charge and freely given. Stuart Twemlow's private practice shifted from mainly adults to mainly children after he started working free of charge on violence problems in schools. Teachers and administrators also referred friends and relatives, since they felt he did not seem to fit the mould of doctors as “typical” money-grabbing psychopaths!
Our culture is not used to altruistic actions without a price tag. Analysts who are willing to embrace the community psychoanalyst, as well as the clinical psychoanalyst role, can likely gain both patients and an improved sense of community relevance if their model of psychoanalysis moves outside the limited fee-for-service medical model to one that embraces a community psychoanalyst perspective.
For example, an unusual and solicited application of psychoanalytic knowledge to community problems is given below. Awareness of the complex process of mourning can ameliorate and even redirect political battles immersed in conflict: think of every decision in Northern Ireland. Kate Catterall, an Austin artist and Professor of Art and Art History, at the University of Texas, presented her ideas about the controversy over a memorial to the troubles in Belfast. She made several observations on this problem at a presentation to the Austin Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology in October, 2005. She says:
The April 1998 report, entitled We will Remember Them, drafted by the Northern Ireland Victims commissioner Sir Kenneth Bloomfield and commonly known as the “Bloomfield Report,” outlined the parameters for a