Psychiatry has to make choices in the wide range of psychotherapies. A good classification however permits to distinguish those that are of personal development, those that have mainly a political significance of those that have really a clinical use. The psychoanalytic model keeps being the most useful one for understanding the psychiatric patients and for their treatment.
Researches should be undertaken to adapt the model to more realistic issues. Short-term analytic psychotherapies should be tested in adapted settings, with emphasis on focal problems, present unconscious stresses and limited goals.
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