A doctor listens to a patient digging into her past at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute Treatment Center in New York, April 25, 1956. The psychoanalyst’s couch has provided material for endless jokes and cartoons since Sigmund Freud developed this method of treatment for neuroses. Some modern analysts discard it in favor of face to face sessions, but the method of “free association” to give the doctor clues to the patient’s hidden fears and problems is accepted even by dissidents from Freudian theories. (AP Photo/Bob Wands)
