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IJP 39:59-64 (1958)

Therapeutic Results in Psycho-Analytic Treatment without Fee—(Observation on Therapeutic Results)

Authors: Sandor Lorand M.D., William A. Console M.D.

Abstract

In an address given before the Fifth International Psycho-Analytic Congress at Budapest in September, 1918, Freud made the following inspiring remarks:

And now in conclusion I will cast a glance at a situation which belongs to the future—one that will seem fantastic to many of you, but which I think, nevertheless, deserves that we should be prepared for it in our minds. You know that the therapeutic effects we can achieve are very inconsiderable in number. We are but a handful of people, and even by working hard each one of us can deal in a year with only a small number of persons. Against the vast amount of neurotic misery which is in the world, and perhaps need not be, the quantity we can do away with is almost negligible. Besides this, the necessities of our own existence limit our work to the well-to-do classes, accustomed to choose their own physicians, whose choice is diverted away from psycho-analysis by all kinds of prejudices. At present we can do nothing in the crowded ranks of the people who suffer exceedingly from neuroses.
Now let us assume that by some kind of organization we were able to increase our numbers to an extent sufficient for treating large masses of people. Then, on the other hand, one may reasonably expect that at some time or other the conscience of the community will awake and admonish it that the poor man has just as much right to help for his mind as he now has to the surgeon's means of saving life; and that the neuroses menace the health of a people no less than tuberculosis, and can be left as little as the latter to the feeble handling of individuals. Then clinics and consultation-departments will be built, to which analytically trained physicians will be appointed, so that the men who would otherwise give way to drink, the women who have nearly succumbed under their burden of privations, the children for whom there is no choice but running wild or neurosis, may be made by analysis able to resist and able to do something in the

IJP 39:59-64 (1958)

Therapeutic Results in Psycho-Analytic Treatment without Fee—(Observation on Therapeutic Results)

Authors: Sandor Lorand M.D., William A. Console M.D.

Abstract

In an address given before the Fifth International Psycho-Analytic Congress at Budapest in September, 1918, Freud made the following inspiring remarks:

And now in conclusion I will cast a glance at a situation which belongs to the future—one that will seem fantastic to many of you, but which I think, nevertheless, deserves that we should be prepared for it in our minds. You know that the therapeutic effects we can achieve are very inconsiderable in number. We are but a handful of people, and even by working hard each one of us can deal in a year with only a small number of persons. Against the vast amount of neurotic misery which is in the world, and perhaps need not be, the quantity we can do away with is almost negligible. Besides this, the necessities of our own existence limit our work to the well-to-do classes, accustomed to choose their own physicians, whose choice is diverted away from psycho-analysis by all kinds of prejudices. At present we can do nothing in the crowded ranks of the people who suffer exceedingly from neuroses.
Now let us assume that by some kind of organization we were able to increase our numbers to an extent sufficient for treating large masses of people. Then, on the other hand, one may reasonably expect that at some time or other the conscience of the community will awake and admonish it that the poor man has just as much right to help for his mind as he now has to the surgeon's means of saving life; and that the neuroses menace the health of a people no less than tuberculosis, and can be left as little as the latter to the feeble handling of individuals. Then clinics and consultation-departments will be built, to which analytically trained physicians will be appointed, so that the men who would otherwise give way to drink, the women who have nearly succumbed under their burden of privations, the children for whom there is no choice but running wild or neurosis, may be made by analysis able to resist and able to do something in the