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Psychoanalysis is only just beginning to be respectable. Time was, and not so very long ago, when a doctor of medicine could not have been convinced that any therapeutic value whatever should be accredited to psychological endeavor. But times have changed, and psychology itself is seeking to prove its right to existence by “applying” itself to “human” problems. It is significant that the greatest modern advances in psychology have come through the work of medical men, who first and foremost are “humane.” Psychoanalysis has evolved out of an endeavor to alleviate and cure hysteria. It has finally proved itself to be a source of scientific insight of the most extensive sort, as well as a therapeutic process of the greatest importance, It is because psychoanalysis is primarily one method of therapy that it has its own proper function to fulfil in hospitals.
Seven years ago was established the first Social Service Department in any hospital, and since then the work has proved itself so important that today no really firstclass hospital could consider itself complete without a social service department.
As the social conditions under which a patient lives have been found to be of such importance in the successful treatment of some diseases (nay, one might say all, instead of some, because what is the significance of nurses, or hospitals, if it is not that they create a social situation more favorable than common, to recovery?), so it has been found that the psychological condition of the patient is also of the utmost importance to his recovery.
Institutions arise as a result of human need and desire: hence hospitals, churches, schools, charities, etc., but no one institution