ABSTRACT
Turkey is a secular country, with a population of about 73 million persons, of whom 99% are Muslims. To have a clearer picture of how psychoanalysis evolved in Turkey, however, author will first go far back in history and provide a bird's eye view of how the Turks dealt with mental health issues under the influence of Islam, and then fast-forward to the 1930s to illustrate the initial reception of Sigmund Freud's ideas in Turkey. In Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's Turkey, interest in psychoanalysis began in Ankara, then a dusty little city that had become the capital of the new republic, rather than the capital of the now-vanished Ottoman Empire, Istanbul. In Istanbul, the split between the two psychoanalytic schools continues, and it has also played a role in creating some discomfort within the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and a "competition" between French or American "styles" of psychoanalytic training or thinking.
