The Question of Lay Analysis

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...