The psychiatrist is a doctor. He is specialised in psychiatry. He can accompany the patients he receives in various ways: through personal follow-up, with medication, or during a stay in a specialised hospital.

The title of psychotherapist in Luxembourg is reserved for those who are initially psychologists or doctors and who have also completed specialist training in psychotherapy at a university.

The psychoanalyst can be a  psychologist with a master in psychology, a doctor, or a doctor specializing in psychiatry, but he is not necessarily one of those. Many psychoanalysts are neither psychologist nor physician. They are, however, properly trained : they have a basic education (they may for example have studied literature, or they are historians, jurists, philosophers, but they may very well be nurses, teachers and musicians as well); and they have also acquired specialized training in psychoanalysis, mostly outside of universities, in specialized psychoanalytic institutes and schools.

And then there are the specialists in psychopathology. They are theorists rather than practitioners. Their job is to develop theories about mental illnesses. They answer the following questions : what is mental illness, what is the relationship between illness and health ? What kind of mental illnesses are there, how do we differentiate one from the other ? What are their causes and mechanisms ? The answers to these questions are not unanimous, even among specialists. And practically speaking, they imply different ways of dealing with the problems at hand.

Note : the same person may wear several hats, depending on the occasion. All psychiatrists, for example, have been trained in psychopathology, and some of them are also psychoanalysts.