ABSTRACT
The middle of the twentieth century brought major changes. Several American psychiatrists went to Vienna to study with and be analyzed by S. Freud. Many prominent European psychoanalysts fled central Europe and settled in the United States. The success of psychoanalysis in the world of psychiatry was remarkable. For several decades it dominated American psychiatry. Psychiatry’s enthusiasm for psychoanalysis faded over the next few decades. The theories of psychoanalysis were interesting, but they failed to generate a body of empirical research, were criticized for being unscientific, and came to be seen as historic relics rather than scientific theories. Psychoanalysis seemed much more relevant to psychiatric practice and education than to psychiatric research. In the 1950s, American academic psychiatry was dominated by its educational mission. Beginning the 1960s, as academic psychiatry matured and moved closer to other fields of academic medicine, it became more like them as its research mission became increasingly prominent.
