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This paper was the annual address before the Schilder Society of New York on January 27, 1949. It outlines the development of psychoanalytic psychiatry as the author participated in it from the time it was introduced in America.
While the contributions of Freud were ignored at the clinics of Ziehen in Berlin and Kraepelin in Munich during the period 1908–1909, the author found that in May 1909 the dynamic approach to the psychoses had already been introduced by Adolf Meyer and August Hoch at Wards Island, and no functional case could be presented for diagnosis without some investigation of the mechanisms responsible for the illness. Nevertheless, American analysts were largely dependent upon Europeans for both the theoretical and cultural aspects of psychoanalysis. After the first World War the bonds between America and Europe became still closer through the custom of American analysts going abroad for didactic analyses.
Psychoanalysis began in America as an integral part of medical practice and from its inception has been regarded as essentially a branch of psychiatry and medicine. The New York Psychoanalytic Society, founded in 1911, adhered to this principle and required thorough psychiatric training of its members. The paper goes on to trace the acute controversy between the American and European groups over the question of lay analysis and describes the remarkable growth in psychoanalytic practice in America between the years 1920 and 1930 when the extreme opposition to psychoanalytic thinking began to wane.
AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT