The partnership of psychoanalysis and psychiatry in the treatment of psychosis and borderline states: its evolution in North America.

Abstract

The history of psychiatry is about two hundred years old and that of psychoanalysis more than a hundred, with an important anniversary of the latter in 2011. Freud renewed and humanized psychiatry by enriching its static descriptive method with the new dynamic and interpretive discoveries of psychoanalysis. Freud's innovations, while developed in Europe, were integrated into psychiatry briefly by the Swiss School but mainly in the United States. After many years of fruitful collaboration psychiatry and psychoanalysis seemed to part company in the U.S. in the last few decades. However, the tradition of combining psychiatric care with dynamic principles is still considered valid in the treatment of psychoses and severe personality disorders.