Two letters of Dr. Walter C. Langer give an animated, informal picture of (1) his experiences as a young American psychologist in training at the Vienna

Psychoanalytic Institute during its last years before the Nazi occupation, (2) the clandestine activities of Dr. Langer and other foreign students in helping Austrian friends and colleagues to escape after the Anschluss in March 1938, and (3) his recollections of earlier years as a clinical psychologist, child analyst, and director of a residential school for disturbed boys. Dr. Langer's experiences are presented and discussed in relation to an important early phase in the development of American psychoanalysis, when full training could only be obtained in European institutes. His position as an analyst, a nonphysician, on returing to this country, where the American tradition of "medical orthodoxy" prevailed, prompts some reflections on the past and present status of lay analysis.