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PARTISAN REVIEW
psychoanalysis, namely, what has become of the patients. Has
psychoanalysis lost its appeal for them? Here, too, the question is not
easy to answer. While it seems clear that the practicing medical
psychoanalyst has fewer patients than he did before (and this has
been verified in several studies), we can by no means be certain that
fewer people are being treated by psychoanalysis, in other words,
that fewer people are turning to psychoanalysis as a form of therapy
than before.
For a long time, a considerable number of patients seen by
analysts were referred by physicians, general practitioners and
specialists. Schooled in the tradition of organic pathology, most
physicians, however, were never comfortable with the dynamic,
depth psychology of psychoanalysis. When the drug companies
began to produce in tremendous quantities a great variety of medica–
tions supposedly specific for anxiety and depression, many practi–
tioners, as well as psychiatrists, enthusiastically seized upon these
new additions to their therapeutic armamentarium. Many of the
patients now being treated by drugs would have, in the past, been
treated by analysis. The sale of drugs like Valium, for instance, has
soared to what is a truly terrifying level. Iatrogenically induced
drug addiction is a serious problem in this country. Even if we
disregard the reasons why so many people, especially the young, turn
to drugs, we cannot overlook the fact that the medical profession has
contributed to the growing tolerance of drug use by its readiness to
prescribe the quick, easy, temporary, dependency-inducing relief
that comes from drugs rather than to advise patients to confront their
problems with soul-searing honesty.
Self-scrutiny and deep soul-searching do not stand very high on
the agenda in the existential mood of our times. The pleasure of the
present moment and the self-validating experience of immediate
sensuality are taken as ends in themselves. Writing ten years ago,
Anna Freud said "analysis offers enlightenment about the inner
world, about man's struggle within himself. The present battle cry,"
she added, "is often man against society." In this climate, introspec–
tion becomes irrelevant and involvement with other people is being
replaced by commitment to an impersonal mass. Understanding
people as individuals is not as appealing as the prospect of manipu–
lating social institutions. Thus Sterba said that the devaluation of
the human being as an individual and of his feelings is characteristic
of our period. The members of the turbulent generation of the sixties
are now mostly in the age group of thirty to forty, and it was from
