Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry and Systems Thinking*

There are still many sincere individuals in the psychoanalytic world who strongly insist that there is no inherent connection at all between psychoanalysis and psychiatry. Perhaps no one has advanced this thesis more militantly that Maxwell Gitelson, who, in an article in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association some 17 years ago , flatly stated that psychiatry is a therapeutic specialty of medicine, but psychoanalysis is a basic science akin to physics or chemistry. Thus, while psychiatry must make use of the insights that psychoanalysis makes possible, psychoanalysis itself is totally independent of psychiatry.

This is by no means an illogical point of view, but before it can be evaluated more carefully it is necessary to specify more clearly what is meant by psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysts do not need to be reminded that the term psychoanalysis is used in three distinct and separate ways: (1) as a unique investigative tool, (2) as a technique of therapy, and (3) as a body of theory or theories. Of these three, it is probable that the investigative application has proven to be the most valuable one over time, as was suggested by Freud himself when he stated that the most important function of psychoanalysis belongs to its potentialities as an investigative method (Gitelson, 1964). Certainly the techniques of free association, dream interpretation and elucidation of transference reactions are among the most valuable research tools that are available for exploring the subjective content of the human mind and they have opened important new vistas of understanding. Yet, there are also