Notes on a Controversy: The Question of Lay Analysis

Possibly one of the most fervid, and by far one of the most central dilemmas in the early history of psychoanalysis, was the dilemma surrounding the ‘question of lay analysis’—the problem of ‘whether non-doctors as well as doctors are to be allowed to practise psychoanalysis’ (Freud 1926, p. 183). According to Jones (1953-57, vol. III, p. 287), this dilemma aroused Freud's most lively interest during the last phase of his life. It certainly occupied the minds of many analysts during the better part of the 1920s and 1930s. Consequently, the issue of lay analysis has received ample attention in the literature. It occupies a separate section in most biographies on Freud (for example, Jones 1953-57, vol. III, chapter 9; Gay 1988, pp. 489-500), but typically not in the biographies of those actively involved in the controversy (compare Brome 1982 on Ernest Jones; Young-Bruehl 1988 on Anna Freud; Roazen 1986 on Helene Deutsch). Yet I also found that there are not many historical studies dedicated to the problem of lay analysis as such (Robert Wallerstein's monography regrettably appeared too late to be included in this paper). Furthermore, it is my impression that the discussions about the issue have been even more neglected. I find the problem of lay analysis is often reduced to a simple clash of positions either for or against lay analysis. In other words, the discursive dynamics in the lay analysis controversy have been neglected.

The aim of this paper is to explore these particular dynamics in the lay analysis discussions. The general questions I am interested in are: how did the discussions on lay analysis originate, and how did they proceed? Who dominated them? What specific discursive mechanisms were used during this controversy? And, finally, to what new arrangements did they lead? I shall