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[[Freud ]] wrote The Question of Lay [[Analysis ]] as an occasional piece in support of one of his friends, Theodor Reik, who had been accused of practicing [[medicine ]] illegally (he was not a physician). He cast it in the [[form ]] of an informal conversation with an "impartial interlocutor," probably Julius Tandler, the Viennese city councilor for [[welfare]], with whom he had in fact discussed the Reik [[case]].

The question of "lay" analysis had been of concern to Freud and his students for a long [[time ]] because not all of [[them ]] were physicians. The gap had progressively widened between those who, like Freud, felt that sound [[training ]] as an [[analyst ]] was all that mattered, regardless of any previously acquired diplomas, and those (particularly [[Abraham ]] A. Brill and the Americans) who, considering analysis to be a medical [[discipline]], wanted to [[prohibit ]] non-physicians from practicing. Ernest [[Jones ]] launched a major survey of the [[analytic ]] [[community ]] before the Innsbruck International Congress in September 1927, at which twenty-eight contributions on the [[subject ]] were discussed without any agreement [[being ]] reached. Freud wrote a "Postscript" for the occasion, maintaining his [[claim ]] that analysis could be practiced by non-physicians.

Freud opens the [[imaginary ]] conversation of The Question of [[Lay Analysis ]] by describing disorders for which the ordinary physician can offer no [[real ]] [[help]], then proceeds to [[outline ]] the methods of free [[association]], [[dream ]] analysis and so on, which seek to shed light on [[unconscious ]] [[processes]]. He provides his putative interlocutor, whose supposed criticisms and questions frequently [[punctuate ]] the [[exchange]], with some [[notion]], from the [[dynamic ]] point of view, of his [[structural ]] [[theory ]] of the [[mind]], of the [[instincts ]] and, from the [[economic ]] point of view, of [[repression ]] and [[anxiety]], of [[childhood ]] [[sexuality]], of the [[Oedipus ]] [[complex]], and so on. This metapsychological [[overview ]] is followed by an account of the procedures of analytic [[therapy ]] ([[transference]], [[resistance]], and the art of [[interpretation]]). Neither general medicine nor [[psychiatry ]] prepares the physician for any of this, Freud declares; they may even constitute an obstacle. Special training is required, beginning with a personal analysis, without which even a physician may be no more than a [[quack]]. Any legislation on the subject would therefore be more of a hindrance than a help. Freud therefore concludes that analysis may perfectly well be practiced by non-physicians. Such an analyst would nevertheless [[need ]] the help of a physician, prior to the analysis, in [[order ]] to settle diagnostic questions or, in the course of the analysis, to take over in the case of disorders beyond the scope of the analyst: but the same holds for the physician analyst. Freud concludes by tracing the program of what the [[ideal ]] analytical training might involve (p. 246).

This [[work ]] has had considerable influence on the debates that continue to this day on the "question of lay analysis" and the training of [[analysts]]. On the whole—though with noticeable variations from country to country—the International [[Psychoanalytical ]] Association has adopted Freud's [[position]].

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1926e). Die Frage der Laienanalyse. Unterredungen mit einem Unparteiischen. Leipzig-[[Vienna]]-Zurich, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag]]