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This timely paper examines crucial issues confronting psychoanalysis: its adoption by American psychiatry as a dynamic and therapeutic tool, the growing criticisms of its not being more therapeutically effective in all areas of human behavior, and finally, its struggle to maintain its identity in the face of splinter movements. Psychoanalysis is a science and the analytic paradigm was established by Freud to meet a crisis in the field of human behavior as the theories then in vogue were inadequate to the task of understanding or treating mental illness.
Gitelson doubts that another crisis now exists and believes that our current period in analysis is comparable to the 'normal period' in any science during which time there is further working through, elaboration, and corroboration of the paradigm. He cautions against too much therapeutic zeal in analysis, a trend which might tend to dilute its investigative powers. The classic technique must be retained in order to pursue the scientific investigation of human behavior. A reappraisal of the qualifications for future analysts is also suggested; and these should not necessarily be based on a medical or psychiatric background.