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Let us declare this at once. In our view, nobody did so much for psychiatry as did Sigmund Freud. If we may speak for ourselves, though we do not mean to distinguish ourselves from other commentators, but rather in order to specify as our own responsibility as authors, we would say this. However strange it may sound, those of us who consider Pinel, Tuke and Rush to be the true and significant founders of psychiatry can appreciate Freud's contribution all the more. It was they who returned to their patients their human dignity, yet they did so only in principle, whereas Freud has managed to employ their humane attitude in the service of his patients. They created this very branch — psychiatry — as a branch of medicine; yet those of us who sympathize with their humanism may well find that today they sympathise more with the challenges of modern antipsychiatry than with any other aspect of the profession. In such a frame of mind, throwing a detached glance at Freud, we can hardly fail to come up with a strong appreciation of the spirit of psychoanalysis coupled with a strong criticism of different aspects of psychoanalysis, not to say even very strong criticism of it.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-6863-9_6

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