The other half of medicine.

Abstract

Dr. Whitehorn has spoken about an important split in medicine, that between the university and the private institute. As a discussant, I find myself in a somewhat awkward position. During most of each week, I am an integral part of a university organization, a respectable member of a respectable community of professional men and scholars. But toward the end of each week, I disappear from this community and show up a few hours later as a candidate in a private psychoanalytic institute. If I were forced to make a choice between the two, and were a man of independent means, I would find it difficult to choose. Because in the 5 universities in which I have both learned and taught, I have never found a higher level of clinical conference and seminar than in this private institute, nor greater flexibility and freedom of expression; and I have sometimes met, in universities and medical schools, both scientific intolerance and professional incompetence. But fortunately I do not have to make this choice, and unfortunately I am not a man of independent means, so I shall continue this double life where I can gain insight into both sides of an important controversy. There is another split in American medicine that I should like to bring into this discussion, the split between town and gown, between the market place and the campus. Let me begin with a brief digression, and speak for a moment about academic philosophy, because I think it points a moral. The philosophy of ancient Greece became most vivid and most significant when it dealt with the common life, and found its major problems in the streets, and the homes, and the political meeting places. Since then, whenever it has retired from the community and made itself the chief object of its study, philosophy has lost vitality and meaning. This