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Individual psychiatry, frequently attacked in the past, is now being attacked as irrelevant by the same current of indictment as other contemporary institutions. For example, a recent psychiatric throwaway magazine1 quotes the editor of the Journal of Psychotherapy, Dr. Stanley Lesse, to the effect that psychotherapies as practiced in the United States are anachronistic and out of step with the broad socio-economic and socio-philosophical trends of our rapidly changing society. From a different vantage point, a youth movement in the European analytical societies strives to change the organizational structures of their institutions with implications for a revolution in the practice of psychoanalysis.
Such expressions of ferment for a social psychiatry are condemned by many as uninformed and opinionated. However, little is done to determine the relevance of the theory of individual psychology for the theory and practice of social psychiatry. The Writings of Anna Freud, Volume IV, may well serve as a bridge between individual and community psychiatry. One of a series, it consists of thirty-five papers first published in the eleven years between 1945 and 1956, many of which are more than just psychoanalytic expositions and have intentions beyond the practice of individual psychoanalysis.
Though it is not yet time to enumerate and evaluate all of Anna Freud's contributions to science, psychoanalysis, and humanity, some of the qualities of her productivity are readily appreciated and have been acknowledged. A recent tribute2 recognizes, among other things, Miss Freud's remarkable appreciation of the reciprocal relationship between phenomenology and theory. Her use of psychoanalytic theory and observation has produced a number of works considered as classic since their first appearance. Many of the papers in this volume qualify in that category, including