Notes

Under the headline NORWAY REGULATES PSYCHOANALYSIS a special correspondent to the Journal of the American Medical Association sends the following letter dated June 14, 1939 printed in the J.A.M.A. (Vol. CXIII, No. 3, July 15, 1939):

Psychoanalysis having run riot in Norway for several years to the financial benefit of the psychoanalyst, the inevitable reaction has set in. Dr. Ragnar Vogt, professor of psychiatry at the University of Oslo, in 1937 publicly denounced a state of affairs little short of scandalous. Psychoanalysis, he said, had become a vogue, a tragic feature of which was the evolution of an interminable chain of psychoanalysts. The patient who was analyzed yesterday set himself up today as a psychoanalyst. Professor Vogt drew attention to the possibility of curbing the activities of these amateur psychoanalysts by legislative measures. July 15, 1938, effect was given to this suggestion in a royal edict. According to this edict, which is supplementary to earlier legislation of 1927 and 1936, psychoanalysis is defined as a process which is continued for some time and which aims to clarify, interpret or otherwise influence unconscious mental processes. Psychoanalysis thus defined must not be undertaken even by doctors unless they have been given special permission by competent authority. In 1927 legislation was adopted limiting the activities of qualified doctors in certain fields in which they did not have the competence of specialists. This legislation aimed to prevent bodily injury to patients under the care of doctors without special knowledge of dangerous therapeutic measures. The legislation of 1938 extended this principle to the prevention of grievous mental injury. The Oslo Faculty of Medicine appointed a committee of three members to aid the country's medical director in working out rules to govern the activities which a doctor may or may not undertake without special permission. Henceforth if a psychoanalyst is challenged in connectio