Teaching and Learning of Psychoanalytic Psychiatry in Medical School

Since the end of the second World War, an increasing number of psychoanalysts have become professors of psychiatry in an increasing number of medical colleges in this country by virtue of the time and interest they have devoted to psychiatry and by reason of their interest in graduate and undergraduate medical education. As the president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Dr. William Barrett stated recently, every art or science in the Western World which has demonstrated its validity, effectiveness, and usefulness to society has eventually been admitted to the curriculum of the universities—as has psychiatry increasingly for many decades. The recent gradual increase in the number of psychoanalysts on the faculties of colleges of medicine is not only evidence that the fruit of Freud's genius is progressively being recognized as an addition to the storehouse of knowledge and of useful skills; it may also be a sign that psychoanalysis is entering upon another phase of its development and of its more thorough integration with other relevant sciences of human behavior, particularly with psychiatry—despite the doubts and fears which still exist of dilution and distortion of Freud's basic contribution, or of deviation from orthodox psychoanalysis.

The eager, youthful enthusiasm of freshmen and sophomores in medical school can be a powerful stimulus and challenge to instructors to re-examine their pedagogical techniques, and attempt experiments in ways of increasing the participation of more students as the most effective way of their acquiring the skills they desire. The introduction of the actual life situations