Abstract
In this work the author, leaning on personal consideration and individual experience, has tried to stress the importance of the following points:
1) Every psychiatrist, considered as the healer of a human mind, the functioning of which is relatively deviated in regard to an individual and social norm, is forced to utilize psychotherapy as an essential working instrument.
2) This one in turn requires of the person using it that he be an individual harbouring a so-called normal psychic organization, since in the course of treatment he will have to establish himself as a norm of adequate functioning.
3) A personal psychotherapy of the future psychiatrist will enable him to know his weaknesses and to manage and master best his interpersonal and above all professional relations. He will thus perceive more and understand better, the reality of the mentally sick.
4) The knowledge of psychopathology should not be considered complete unless it is at the same time intellectual and affective. If the former can be acquired by study, the latter is directly related to the apprehension of one's own mode of reaction and will not be fully attained without personal psychotherapy. These observations corroborate those of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and the remarks of Karl Menninger.
5) Finally, it seems that a better understanding of mental sickness, besides allowing more efficacious help of the patient, is a precious token in view of an authentic psychiatric science.