Lay analysis is psychoanalytic treatment carried out by someone who is not a physician. In a less common sense, it is a treatment carried out by someone who has not received the necessary training in the practice of analysis. The term was first used by Freud in The Question of Lay Analysis (1926e), where he vigorously asserted that in the practice of psychoanalytic treatment, what mattered was good training, independent of diplomas obtained beforehand. He had already expressed a similar view in a prefece to Eitingon's report (1923g) and in a preface to a book by Aichhorn (1925f).

On July 18, 1926, the newspaper Neue freie Presse published a letter from Freud correcting some inexact information regarding a lawsuit filed against Theodor Reik for the illegal practice of medicine. In it Freud reaffirmed that a nonphysician could be a psychoanalyst, citing both Reik and his daughter Anna Freud, but he added that he did...