ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses some of the main contributions that psychoanalysis has made to psychiatry, particularly in the field of diagnosis. Psychiatrists need to identify symptoms in order to elaborate proper diagnoses, and they resort to recognised therapeutic approaches to decide upon courses of treatment, which are sometimes shared with other branches of medicine. To reach a psychoanalytic diagnosis it is necessary to maintain a balance between the free listening of the patient’s mental contents and his/ her speech as well as the objective evaluation of the different dimensions of the patient’s mental functioning. The combination of psychiatric and psychoanalytic training is a wonderful experience and people who work in both fields can greatly profit from the overlapping of such fields: they have a deeper knowledge of mental illnesses, which is crucial for comprehending severe mental disorders and psychopathology.
