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This paper is a brief outline of the present tendency in America to combine psycho-analytic training with the teaching in medical schools. According to the author the difficulties of psycho-analysis are partly due to the fact that instruction is conducted in private institutes rather than in medical schools 'free of dogmatic teaching'. An attempt at such a programme of graduate courses in psycho-analysis
has been made at the New York Medical College. Changes in psycho-analytic ideas must be accompanied by changes in educational forms and methods. Originally there was an urgent need for unaffiliated training, but this time is now gone by.
Alexander describes 'a cultural lag' in the development of psycho-analytic teaching. Psycho-analytic training had of necessity to develop in isolation from the rest of the medical programme, but the plan described by Gralnick is a good example of the gradual liquidation of the 'cultural lag'. In 1948, in Chicago, the Associated Psychiatry Faculties, Inc., was founded. Members of the Association are the psychiatric departments of the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, Michael Reese Hospital, and the Chicago Psycho-analytic Institute. Its aim is the co-ordination of the general psychiatric and psycho-analytic training of the residents in these institutions, which is a joint responsibility of the Associated Psychiatric Faculties. The resistance of the medical school justifies the isolationism of psycho-analysis, and the isolationism of psycho-analysis vindicates the resistance of the medical schools. With the relaxation of uncritical rejection, the defenders of new ideas can become more self-critical, and tolerate differences of opinion among themselves without which no development in the field of science is possible.