The Human Mind [antikvár]

Seven more years have elapsed. The war predicted in the prefaceto the second edition came to pass on precisely the problem therepredicated; the conflict between theories of hereditary superior-ity and theories of environmental determination. Psychiatry,since the discoveries of Sigmund Freud, has been dominated bythe environmental philosophy and hence finds itself wholly inaccord with the spirit of the Allied Nations in World War II.On account of that war millions of people have been killed andmillions more evicted, orphaned, widowed, wounded, trans-ported, incarcerated. For everyone mercifully spared thesegreater tragedies, the difficulties of life adjustment have becomegreater. A better understanding of the nature of the humanmind was never more necessary and psychiatry has rapidly ad-vanced from a minor and relatively unpopular specialty of medi-cine to one of the great fields of scientific and popular interest.Both the psychiatric casualties from battle and the rejectionsby the Selective Service for psychiatric reasons have far ex-ceeded expectations. It is difficult for the average man to realizethe immensity of the problem. There are available in theUnited States less than 4,000 psychiatrists. The Army and Navyalone could use all of these and more. Meanwhile, civilian hos-pitals, mental hygiene clinics, institutions for the delinquentand criminal, universities, colleges and public schools, generalhospitals and private psychiatric practices, entirely aside frommilitary needs, could use at the present time 10,000 psychia-trists (the estimate of the Director of the National Committeefor Mental Hygiene, October 1944). The time required totrain a physician in psychiatry following his graduation frommedical school is at least four years. If all the medical studentsgraduating from all the medical schools for the next three yearswere to elect psychiatry as their major interest, we would haveonly enough psychiatrists to meet the present needs by 1951.However, probably not one-twentieth of these students willmake this choice, and to this we must add the further bad newsthat there do not exist in the whole world training facilities andteachers for even this minimum of prospective psychiatrists.Obviously other ways to meet this need must be sought, be-yond that of training more psychiatrists. For one thing an ori- Vll