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Si Freud et ses premiers collègues pratiquent librement en Autriche le nouveau traitement inventé par Freud pour soigner les patients névrosés et autres, la «psycho-analyse», une plainte juridique d’un patient contre son analyste, Theodor Reik, va instruire un procès pour exercice illégal de la médecine, procès qui n’aura finalement pas lieu. Mais Reik, un érudit de formation psychologique et littéraire, analysé par Abraham, se verra interdit de pratiquer la psychanalyse en Autriche. Le statut de la psychanalyse est alors posé. Freud va défendre Reik et la psychanalyse profane, laïque, par un essai remarquable, publié en 1926, La question de l’analyse profane. Désormais hors de la médecine, la psychanalyse sera néanmoins de nouveau attaquée en France et fera l’objet dans les années cinquante de plusieurs procès à la demande de l’ordre des médecins contre des psychanalystes non-médecins. Aujourd’hui la question de son statut est reposée indirectement par les législateurs qui, sous le couvert de la défense de l’usager, veulent régler la question des psychothérapies. La psychanalyse restera-t-elle une méthode ou bien deviendra-t-elle une profession?

Is Psychoanalysis a Profession? Freud and his pioneering colleagues practised freely in Austria using the methods Freud had invented to treat patients suffering from neuroses and other disorders he called ‘psychoanalysis.’However, a complaint lodged by a patient against his analyst Theodor Reik led to the latter being charged for illegally practising medicine, even if the case never in fact got to court. As a consequence, Reik, a highly erudite man who had studied psychology and literature and had been analysed by Abraham, was banned from practising psychoanalysis in Austria. This event raised the thorny issue of the status conferred on psychoanalysis. Freud took Reik’s defence and expounded the notion of lay analysis in a brilliant essay he published in 1926, The Question of Lay Analysis. From then on, when practised outside a strictly medical context, psychoanalysis was to come under attack in France, and several court cases against analysts who were not qualified Medical Doctors resulted from this in the 1950s, on the instigation of the French General Medical Council. Today, the matter is now being revived by legal instances in France, who, while claiming their sole interest is protecting the general public, do in fact wish to put an end to the debate on psychotherapies. Will psychoanalysis remain a method or is it fated to becoming a profession?