What is Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a method for the investigation of mental processes inaccessible by other means. At the same time, psychoanalysis is also a therapeutic method for neurotic disorders.

Freud on Tabor street
Sigmund Freud is the creator of psychoanalysis (here Freud on Tabor Str by Joachim Torr)
As therapeutic technique, psychoanalysis is different from psychiatry and psychotherapy in general, as it stipulates the existence of a psychic unconscious, and insists on analysis and the integration of the contents of unconscious as therapeutic procedure.

The psychoanalysis gradually built on clinical observation and research, accompanied by reflections and theoretical ideas concerning the structure of the psychic apparatus, the dynamic of mental processes, repression, resistance, transference, and more...

iconDefinition of psychoanalysis includes knowledge acquired from psychic unconscious research and analysis. Such knowledge has gradually made up a new body of science called psychoanalysis.

iconPsychoanalysis is also applied to the study of social, cultural, and religious phenomena. In this latter aspect, demanding for a re-evaluation of the mechanisms and meanings of culture, psychoanalysis has penetrated the consciousness of the wider public beyond its therapeutic limits.

Psychoanalysis was Born in Vienna

Psychoanalysis was born in Vienna by the end of the 19th century and spread with the contribution of Freudian disciples and dissidents, who, more or less loyal to Freudian theories, have issued currents and schools of psychoanalysis with various shades of difference. That is the case of analytic psychology forged by C. G. Jung, as well as that of individual psychology, made up by Alfred Adler.

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Psychoanalysis together with elements of psychoanalytical doctrine and practice are also to be found in modern psychotherapeutic currents, under various shapes and blends.

Sigmund Freud on Psychoanalysis

Psycho-analysis is the name (1) of a procedure for the investigation of mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way, (2) of a method (based upon that investigation) for the treatment of neurotic disorders and (3) of a collection of psychological information obtained along those lines, which is gradually being accumulated into a new scientific discipline. (From "Two Enciclopaedia Articles", 1923)

Psycho-analysis may be said to have been born with the twentieth century; for the publication in which it emerged before the world as something new - my Interpretation of Dreams - bears the date '1900'. But, as may well be supposed, it did not drop from the skies ready-made. It had its starting-point in older ideas, which it developed further; it sprang from earlier suggestions, which it elaborated. (From "A Short Account of Psycho-Analysis", 1924)

Freud […] made an alteration in their technique, by replacing hypnosis by the method of free association. He invented the term 'psycho-analysis'. (From "Psycho-Analysis", 1926). AROPA