Contemporary psychoanalysis is passing through a crisis which superficially manifests itself in a certain decrease in the number of students applying for training in psychoanalytic institutes, and also in the number of patients who seek help from the psychoanalyst. Competing therapies have emerged in recent years which claim to have better therapeutic results and to require much less time and hence, of course, much less money. The psychoanalyst, who ten years ago was considered by the urban middle class to have the answer to its mental anguish, is now put on die defensive by psychotfierapeutic competitors and is losing die therapeutic monopoly.

The last several decades have been characterized by social, economic, and cultural changes affecting the field of mental health,