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If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What is psychoanalysis? Who speaks for psychoanalysis? We are familiar with Freud's many contradictory teachings and the diverse practices he engaged in, calling them all “psychoanalysis.” We know ‘hat the term is used to refer to a method of diagnosing and treating mental illnesses, detecting mental illness in famous dead persons and in characters invented by poets and writers, explaining and influencing human behavior, and interpreting the “meaning” of works of art. Here are two current examples of what persons officially authorized to speak for psychoanalysis say about it.
Richard Fox (2001), president of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 2001, declares: “Psychoanalysis today is a far cry from what it was thirty to forty years ago… We lobby in Washington… We work with other groups such as the ACLU to further our goals” (p. 27). These activities are not specific to psychoanalysis, nor is it self-evident, as Fox implies, that they are praiseworthy. During World War II, the ACLU supported and justified the incarceration of innocent Americans diagnosed as