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Eissler presents a somewhat depressing view of psychoanalysis. As a therapy psychoanalysis 'does not have a bright future'. Few patients can successfully accomplish the task of psychoanalysis, a true reconstruction and resolution of the infantile neurosis. Drugs can exert a therapeutic effect in certain states far greater than can psychoanalysis; analysis is not very successful with many major problems in today's society, i.e., anomie or addiction. Analysts of the future may confine themselves to patients whose illness does not respond to pills or to less intensive therapy. The future of psychoanalysis as a science also has its limitations. Eissler feels that Freud essentially learned what there was to learn from the psychoanalytic situation, at least as far as the construction of models is conceived. Future contributors to psychoanalysis as science will come more from outside the 'couch situation', i.e., the dream laboratory, Masters and Johnson, etc.
Eissler ends on a more hopeful note. He sees psychoanalysis as a major fortress against the increasing dehumanization of modern society. 'The psychoanalytic situation is just the opposite of a dehumanized one; it is, if anything, concentrated humaneness.'