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boundary between mind and body; this is really the concern of psychiatry,
of psychology, and to some extent of other professions as well.
Insofar as psychoanalysis will develop its research and will be re–
spected in the university, it will filter down into the life of the culture.
Insofar as psychoanalysis communicates meaningfully what it can con–
tribute to cultural understanding, it will filter down into cultural life.
These two sources will provide a network of knowledge to a sophisticated
part of the public. When psychoanalysis is perceived to make a convinc–
ing contribution to knowledge and to culture, it will be accorded more
respect.
I agree with you that more education should be carried out, and that
one task of psychoanalytic institutes and societies is to establish a friendly
environment in their social networks where they are located, and that
psychoanalytic societies should have a concrete cultural mission in their
communities. I think psychoanalytic institutes and societies that tradi–
tionally were very aloof and self- oriented are moving in that direction.
They are opening their doors and have created organizations of friends of
psychoanalysis, which conduct open scientific and cultural programs. Of
course my own societies, the Columbia University Center for
Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the Association for
Psychoanalytic Medicine, have been very active in such endeavors, but
this is now happening more and more throughout the country.
In other countries, psychoanalysis has been very popular, almost too
much so. In France, in Germany, in Argentina, in Brazil, just to name a
few, there is the kind of turbulence around psychoanalysis that existed in
this country twenty or thirty years ago. It has to do with many factors,
but I don't see it as a "once and for all" phenomenon in that it happens
either earlier or later. Rather, I envision it as the expression of the extent
to which psychoanalysis is interested in and able to enter the cultural de–
bate, since it has an important contribution to make to the development
of psychological science. I do feel optimistic as I look at the total world
situation.
Yet I believe that the short-term concerns about financial constraints,
and the decrease of means for psychological treatment that affect health
care, are quite real in all advanced societies. This has to do with the basic
common feature - particularly in Western Europe and the United States,
- that people, instead of dying young and healthy, now die old and sick,
and that our new knowledge cannot be simplified, rationalized, mecha–
nized, but is always acquired by very intensive human investment and is
therefore expensive. Health care is becoming more expensive because we
have more instruments . We know more. People are getting older and
sicker, and we are trying to keep them alive. The question, "What is a
reasonable proportion of the gross domestic product that should be in-
