Freuds Teaching about Law - Essay Example

In many other states, however, people who have no formal training in the medical field can offer such services within the law. As early as 1926, Sigmund Freud, an Australian neurologist, had written about the interaction between law and the practice of psychoanalysis. In his book titled The Question of Lay Analysis, Freud took it upon himself to present expert views concerning the practice of psychoanalysis by lay people. Prompted by the arrest and prosecution of his friend Theodor Reik, a lawyer by profession, Freud noted that lay people should be allowed to practice psychoanalysis.

This paper will focus on Freud’s arguments about the practice of psychoanalysis and the law. Feud and many of his students and followers were greatly concerned about whether “lay” people could practice psychoanalysis1. At the time, it was against the law for people who had no formal training in medicine or who were not physicians to practice psychoanalysis. Many of Freud’s followers especially in the U.S. held the view that psychoanalysis was the preserve of doctors or physicians and no one else.

Freud, however, agued that it was not necessary that a person be trained in medicine to offer services as a psychoanalyst. 2. In fact, it was his view that formal training could impede the psychoanalyst from performing his duties well. In defense of “lay” people’s practice of psychoanalysis, Freud made several critical arguments. For one, he noted that those who suffer from neurological conditions are patients who need treatment. He further noted that lay people are people who are not formally trained to be doctors.

He went further to state that psychoanalysis is a procedure performed to cure nervous disorders or to improve the conditions of neurotics. He aligned his arguments with what the law stipulated by noting that all treatment of neurological conditions were the preserve of doctors. Based on these premises, he concluded that laypeople were not allowed to do analyses on neurotics and that it was in order for them to be punished if they did so. While Freud agreed with many aspects of the law that prohibited non-physicians from practicing psychoanalysis, he was opposed to some of its major premises3.

He noted that neurotics were not like other patients and that the lay people who had received training in psychoanalysis were not, in fact, laymen. He further argued that doctors were devoid of some qualities that they were expected to have by the public and, therefore, made erroneous claims to be doctors. In his description of the practice of psychoanalysis, Freud stated that, it is “a profession of lay curers of souls who need not be doctors and should not be priests” 4. Freud reinforced his arguments about the uniqueness of neurological disorders by giving several examples of diseases against which ordinary doctors had no effective help to offer before proceeding to explain unconscious processes.

He further explained the analysis procedures including resistance, transference, and the art of interpretation5. Based on these arguments Freud brings into light the fact that a physician could well be a quack in so far as treating a neurotic is concerned if they have no training in psychoanalysis. In such a case, the physician would need the intervention of a psychoanalytic expert before they can proceed with further diagnosis or treatment. Based on the arguments posted by Sigmund Freud, it is evident that Freud was of the idea that lay people should be allowed to practice psychoanalysis.

His views are reinforced by arguments that demonstrate that psychoanalysts need not have formal training in the field of medicine. His arguments further demonstrate the fact that neurological disorders are not the same as other diseases and therefore treating