In The Question of Lay Analysis (1927), Sigmund Freud defended the right of those trained in psychoanalysis to practice therapy irrespective of any medical degree.
[8] The issue remained heated until World War II[9] - a split with the American Association only being prevented in the 1920s when a compromise allowed lay analysts to work with children alone in New York.
[12] The policy was somewhat softened by the readiness of the APsaA to grant waivers over the decades to a number of individuals: these included, for example, Erik Erikson and David Rapaport.
[14] However only when lawsuits were brought in the 1980s alleging "restraint of trade"'[15] was the official American position finally altered, and the question of lay analysis resolved - as Freud himself always advocated.
In the 1947 film Mine Own Executioner, actor Burgess Meredith portrays a lay practitioner who treats a traumatized veteran.