PHILADELPHIA PSYCHIATRIC SOCIETY AND PHILADELPHIA PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETY

Abstract

Psychoanalysis started within medicine as an attempt to cure hysterical symp¬ toms by psychologic means. Freud developed further the psychologic approach to hysteria begun by Charcot, Bernheim and Breuer. In this country therapeutic psychoanalysis is considered and practiced as a part of clinical medicine. Psychoanalysis is empiric and scientific. Knowledge of psychologic facts and processes acquired during treatment is the sound basis of its formulations and application in treatment. Psychoanalysis has endeavored to refine and systematize the everyday methods used in understanding the other person's mental situation. In addition to objective observation, it uses introspective psychologic observation. Ernest Jones said that Freud succeeded in fulfilling the delphic injection, Know thyself. Psychoanalysis embodies a dynamic theory of personality, based on a knowledge of clinical psychologic entities and mechanisms. It includes a study of instincts ; psychosexual development; ego; superego, or ego-ideal; cultural and environ¬ mental effects ; mental mechanisms and dynamisms ; interhuman relationships, including identification, transference and object relationship, and the structure of personality. It is an instrumentality' of research into the mind in health and in disorder. Psychoanalysis has helped psychiatry eliminate the artificial separation of mental from physical disease, of mental processes from physical processes ; it has given impetus to psychosomatic medicine and has emphasized that psychologic factors, such as thoughts and ideas, can and do influence and disturb the function of organs morphologically intact, or bring about changes in them ; it has helped psychiatry in its progress from a macroscopic, descriptive science to a microscopic, explanatory one; it has contributed to a better and deeper understanding of criminality, delinquency, behavior problems of children, the psychoses, culture and normalcy; it has developed a more penetrating and effective method for the understanding and treatment of the neuroses ; it has, through its basic findings and concepts, penetrated and greatly influenced modern psychiatric thinking and practice.