Note 7 — Chapter I · PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THEORY AND IN LIFE

I realize that a patient should have the protection of the medical expert’s knowledge. This means that the analyst, if not himself a physician, should be directly associated with the office of a physician. We know, of course, that charlatanry exists no less within the medical profession than elsewhere; yet while a medical degree is in no sense a certificate of personal sincerity, it is a social surety of professional responsibility. On the other hand, I have yet to hear the suggestion offered that a physician who is not himself a psychoanalyst should be closely associated with the office of a psychoanalyst. It seems odd, as one thinks of it, that this provision should not have been offered by those who have been conscientious enough to recognize the reverse need. As a matter of fact, the number of instances in which mental disorders are mistaken for somatic conditions is incomparably greater than those in which there is failure to recognize the existence of the somatic component. If it is important that the analyst should be competent to trace the source of structural diseases, the internist should be equally competent to trace the source of mental disharmonies.