[Onward along the beaten track? or: psychiatrists at the crossroads (author's transl)].

Within the framework of present-day strained relations between physicians, respectively their professional changes of making a career on the one hand, and society on the other, psychiatrists will be facing an even more critical controversy with their colleagues and psychologists. Looking to the demands made by these groups of physicians in respect of medical importance, psychiatrists are compelled to reconsider their own actions and professional pattern more thoroughly and purposefully than ever before.--A cursory glance at the increasingly obvious tasks of meaningful psych-iatry will immediately show that besides the very serious material problems in this underdeveloped branch of medicine, other and even more difficult tasks have to be tackled. One of the most serious problems, which is particularly delicate because it touches upon the psychiatrist's medical self-understanding, is the manner in which psychiatrists should conceive their own activities as a part of medical science and how they should arrive at mutually acceptable terms with their medical colleagues on the one hand and with psychologists on the other, the ultimate aim being to serve medical interests and not only the professional interests of the groups of physicians and allied specialists.