Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is (1) a personality theory and, more generally, a theory of psychological functioning that focuses particularly on unconscious mental processes; (2) a method for the investigation of an individual’s psychological functioning based on the exploration of his or her free associations within a special therapeutic setting; (3) a method for the treatment of a broad spectrum of psychopathological conditions, including the symptomatic neuroses (anxiety states, characterological depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, conversion hysteria, and dissociative hysterical pathology), sexual inhibitions and perversions (“paraphilias”), and the personality disorders. Psychoanalysis has also been applied,mostly in modified versions—that is, in psychoanalytic psychotherapies—to the treatment of severe personality disorders, psychosomatic conditions, and certain psychotic conditions, particularly chronic schizophrenic illness.--- Otto Kernberga
All three aspects of psychoanalysis were originally developed by Sigmund Freud (1916–17, 1938a; Breuer and Freud, 1895), whose theories of the dynamic unconscious, personality development, personality structure, psychopathology, the methodology of psychoanalytic investigation, and methods of treatment still influence the field heavily, both in the sense that many ofhis ideas continue to be the basis ofpsychoanalytic thinking and in the sense that subsequent divergences, controversies, and innovations can be better understood in the light of his contributions.
Psycho; Analysis; Study of mind
Psychology