FLYOVER TERRITORY:

Calling All Ids: Freudians at War (D. D GUTTENPLAN, May 29, 2004, NY Times)

Who owns psychoanalysis? That question is at the center of the most recent battle here in the Freud Wars, the epic (or as the man himself might say, interminable) struggle over the legacy of Sigmund Freud, pioneer psychotherapist, cartographer of the unconscious and former resident of Hampstead, the leafy corner of Northwest London where the concentration of therapeutic couches per square mile may be even higher than on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Late last year a new group calling itself the College of Psychoanalysts sent out a letter inviting British therapists who met certain qualifications to list themselves on the organization's "register of practitioners." The British Psychoanalytical Society, headquarters of classical Freudian analysis, responded with a statement accusing college members of "misleading the public about their training and qualifications." And then the fireworks really started. One founder of the college — which is a professional organization rather than a training institution — countered with a letter describing the society's action as "a phobic response to growth as symbolized in the Oedipal myth." An opponent of the college, on the other hand, described the new group as "an association of wannabes and poseurs."

More recently, the society's Web site included a disclaimer describing the college as a device for allowing therapists "to pass themselves off to the public as though they were trained psychoanalysts." In British law, "passing off" is a form of fraud; this was a declaration of war.

Susie Orbach, a therapist, an active member of the college and the author of the best-selling "Fat Is a Feminist Issue" and other books, says the dispute has already had "a chilling effect" on British intellectual life. To her, the society's argument that the title psychoanalyst "refers not to what the practitioner does, but what they have been trained to do" is nonsensical, a spurious restraint on trade.

"I do the work," she said. "My contributions are contributions to psychoanalysis, its theory and clinical practice, not to some other field."

On the surface, this is a parochial argument about labels and credentials, a tempest in a Viennese teacup — or at most, a professional turf war. But you don't have to probe the protagonists too deeply to discover that this is also a battle over the nature of therapy itself — what it is, what it does, how it works. And it quickly becomes apparent that alongside the intellectual controversy is a bare knuckles fight over money, power and prestige. These people, after all, are professionals of the ego.