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That sort of dilution of the Freudian creed is already far advanced, and some critics predict that classical psychoanalysis will soon be extinct. The 1976 survey by the American Psychoanalytic Association showed that 70% of its members' patients were already receiving some kind of therapy other than psychoanalysis. Since there is no agreement on what works, Freudians—along with neo-Freudians, psychologists, counselors and Pop therapists—are all increasingly eclectic, borrowing bits and pieces of one another's methods. Even at hospitals still dominated by Freudian theory, psychiatric residents now get far more training in neurology, biochemistry, hypnosis and behavior modification than in such traditional gospel as the interpretation of dreams.
This scientific smorgasbord may indicate great creative ferment, or simply confusion, a hedging of bets against what will turn out to be the hot therapy of the 1980s. Psychiatry seems sure of one thing: it does not want to move in the direction of the pseudo therapies, although it occasionally profits from them. Says Miami Psychiatrist Paul Daruna: "Some Pop therapies generate business by stirring people up, jostling them about so they eventually turn to individual therapy." Still, many psychiatrists already feel underemployed, because they often fill many of the same functions as psychiatric social workers, nurses and related professionals. Not that these professionals do not perform valuable services for the mentally troubled; but none of them must endure four years of medical school or long residency in psychiatric wards.
In fact, during the 1960s and early '70s, many psychiatrists put some distance between themselves and organized medicine, identifying more with psychologists, sociologists and other social scientists than with their fellow doctors. Indeed psychiatry seemed almost ashamed of its medical origins, preferring to see itself as a softer, almost humanistic discipline. Along with this greening of psychiatry, the myth developed that it might be able to cure such serious social illnesses as drug abuse, delinquency and crime. Many psychiatrists even wondered why specialists of the human mind had to go to medical school at all. But all that has changed; now the catch phrase is, "Getting back to our roots in medicine."
At least one reason for such a move is an effort by psychiatry to retrieve its cloak of medical respectability at a time when the public is confusing it with charlatan therapies. Psychiatrists also are becoming more hard-nosed. They are increasingly convinced that their profession may not have the answers to profound political and social problems, and should perhaps restrict itself to getting measurable results with the truly sick. One current refrain: psychiatrists should become good team players, assisting other medical specialists in fulfilling their obligations to the sick. Many hospitals now have psychiatrists available for consultation on every kind of problem faced by doctors and their patients. Says Psychiatrist Daniel Asimus of Pasadena, Calif.: "Now is the time for us to train psychiatrists to be medically oriented, helping more people, not by direct therapy most of the time, but by assisting, consulting and advising the other professions."