Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis  may be a set of theories and therapeutic techniques[i] associated with the study of the unconscious ,[ii] which together form a way of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, who retained the term Psychoanalysis  for his own school of thought, and stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Psychoanalysis  was later developed in several directions, mostly by students of Freud, like Alfred Adler and his collaborator, Carl Gustav Jung,[iii] also as by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan. Psychoanalysis  has been known to be a controversial discipline, as its validity as a science is usually contested. Nonetheless, it remains a robust influence within psychiatry, more so in some quarters than others.[iv][v] Psychoanalytic concepts also are widely used outside the therapeutic arena, in areas like psychoanalytic literary criticism, also as within the analysis of film, fairy tales and other cultural phenomena.  The patient expresses his or her thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst infers the unconscious conflicts causing the patient's symptoms and character problems. Through the analysis of those conflicts, which incorporates interpreting the transference and countertransference (the analyst's feelings for the patient), the analyst confronts the patient's pathological defenses to assist the patient gain insight.