I understand that the problem before us for discussion is, How can we best help people to preserve their mental health? and that my part in it is to answer the particular question, What contribution can psychanalysis make toward this end?
I shall confine my remarks almost exclusively to this one point of prevention, resisting the temptation to wander at length over the wider field of the mental treatment of patients who have actually shown distinct symptoms of one or another form of the psychoses.
It is, however, germane to say that inasmuch as psychanalysis is best definable, from the therapeutic point of view, as an educational method of high value, and since, under all circumstances, it exerts its usefulness largely through helping the patient to become a more thoughtful, more rational, and more mature person, the aims of prevention and the aims of treatment are to a great extent