Op-Ed Contribution by Henry J. Friedman by way of Jane S. Hall, our Op-Ed Editor:

Freud invented or discovered psychoanalysis in his role as a physician. Patients came to him suffering from symptoms, usually of a neurological type, and he uniquely found a way to penetrate beneath the surface of the symptoms to the unconscious elements that were generating these conflicts. Is it any wonder that his treatment, psychoanalysis, was viewed as a medical treatment and psychoanalysis in the United States was introduced as a medical speciality, a part of psychiatry, actually what might be called super psychiatry. Psychoanalytic training in the 60’s was understood to be restricted to those trained as psychiatrists. When waivers were granted to PhDs they were usually pledged not to practice as clinicians but to use their clinical training for research purposes.