You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This is the first English edition of Freud's essay written originally in 1926. There has been a previous American edition of this same work by
a different translator published some time before the recent war. This translation is much the better of the two. In this little work Freud undertook to state his position on the question as to whether or not the practice of psychoanalysis should be solely reserved to medical practitioners. His answer is well-known and completely unequivocal. “That for the present all interests would be served if the medical profession would decide to tolerate a class of therapeutists who relieve them of the burdensome treatment of the enormous number of psychogenic neuroses, and who remain constantly in touch with them (the physicians, that is), to the great advantage of the patients.”
As Ernest Jones points out in his foreword, this has been the solution of the English medical profession of the problem of lay analysis. The British Medical Association has permitted properly trained and qualified lay analysts to practice when all preliminary consultations and diagnoses are strictly reserved to the medical people who are also responsible for a general supervision of the medical progress of the case. In Austria, Holland and in many parts of the United States lay analysts are not permitted to so practice.
This whole problem which was the subject of animated and often bitter controversy twenty years ago in continental analytical circles was thus answered differently in various countries. Today, in the United States, this is still a very hotly debated point and it has been the subject of much recent discussion, proposed legislation and hard-feeling among psychiatrists, analysts, clinical psychologists, social workers, “counselors,” etc. In spite of Freud's most powerful advocacy of the practice of lay analysis, we in this country have not been easily convinced of its justice or harm-lessness. It will be some time before we do settle on some defini