title: The need for psychoanalysis is alive and well in community psychiatry.
abstract: While the author recognizes the positive impact community psychiatry has had on postpsychotic patients by the uses of medical management and environmental manipulation, he demonstrates that there is a deficiency in the treatment of lower socioeconomic patients with neurotic illnesses. Specifically, neurotic patients tend to be given supportive therapy and psychopharmacotherapy when a form of psychoanalytic psychotherapy would be more appropriate. The author supports these contentions by presenting three cases which have a diagnosis of hysterical neurosis and which clearly demonstrate the economic, topographical, structural, dynamic, and genetic components of the psychoanalytic theory. Finally, as psychoanalytic psychotherapy is too time-consuming, the author suggests that Freud's early psychoanalytic technique of symptom removal by memory recovery be used when appropriate.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003092:Colitis / Q000523:psychology; D003158:Community Psychiatry; D005260:Female; D006261:Headache / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D011572:Psychoanalysis; D013575:Syncope / Q000523:psychology