Saikoanalisia au mkabala wa unafsiya ni tawi la saikolojia, ambalo muasisi wake mkuu ni Mwaustria Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Mbinu zake zinachunguza kwanza sehemu ya nafsi isiyoelea kwa kawaida (unconscious mind), lakini ni chanzo cha mengi katika mwenendo wa binadamu ili kumtibu mwenye matatizo ya nafsi. Tawi hilo liliendelezwa kwa namna mbalimbali na Alfred Adler, Carl Gustav Jung, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan n.k. Freud retained the term psychoanalysis for his own school of thought.. Merton M. Gill, American Mental Health Foundation: "What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might be considered an unfortunately abbreviated description, Freud said that anyone who recognizes transference and resistance is a psychoanalyst, even if he comes to conclusions other than his own. ... I prefer to think of the analytic situation more broadly, as one in which someone seeking help tries to speak as freely as he can to someone who listens as carefully as he can with the aim of articulating what is going on between them and why.