Ziferstein laments the stoic retreat of analysts to their private practices in the midst of a society threatened by powerful inner and outer explosions. He dismisses the common arguments favouring non-involvement, such as preservation of scientific objectivity, maintenance of analytic anonymity and jeopardy of concentrating on intrapsychic processes, since he regards these as rationalizations, and he points out the tradition of polemical psychoanalysis in Freud's days. He observes that social psychological mechanisms play a decisive role in the preservation of the status quo as between ruler and ruled, and that psychoanalysts can make an important contribution to the reactivation of these mechanisms. In conclusion he cites examples relevant to professional practice, falling in the domain of the American Psychiatric Association.