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Menninger reminds psychiatrists in general and psychoanalysts in particular of the many tasks which they have to fulfil for the war effort. He admonishes them by doubting whether their organizations have actually accomplished all that could have been done. He challenges them by enumerating all the tasks in which an increase of organized activity would be desirable.
(When this paper was read at the Philadelphia meeting, everybody was enthusiastic and agreed that more must be done along the lines suggested. The American Psychoanalytic Association took appropriate steps.)
Menninger closes by stating: 'If I have succeeded in disturbing the atrophied superegos of analysts in even a small degree in the direction of crying needs, I shall feel repaid'. He certainly did succeed in this respect. However, perhaps the analysts are not quite as inert as Menninger hinted. Some of the problems mentioned are of such a nature that they cannot be solved by psychoanalysis or psychiatry alone. Even if an 'individual who had had analytic training, but fortunately was not a member of this organization' was always trying to explain to the nonmedical officers that the chief difficulty in most patients was due to their 'oedipus conflict', it may have been tactless or tactically wrong, nevertheless the fact remains that the chief difficulty of most neurotics is based in the Oedipus conflict.