Michael Brearley was Chair of the External Relations Co-ordinating Committee. Psychoanalysis is dangerous and radical, it brainwashes. Take the issue of child abuse where it is accused both of denying the facts of abuse and of implanting false memories.
Psychoanalysis is impractical and ineffectual, going back to the past and ignoring present problems.
It is a potent instrument, and can therefore be used to ill effect as well as to good effect, and the quality of its impact is limited by the quality of its practitioners There is, however, some reassurance for the public. It thus contains within itself the means of its own self-correction in a way that no other treatment does. Nevertheless people are fallible. For the analytic process to 'take' there is an intrinsic need for involvement by the patient. Indeed, one defence that a patient adopts is to sit back and wait for the analyst to apply the knife or the pills.