Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedia article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as – "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's students Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and Analytical Psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
Sándor Ferenczi was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of Sigmund Freud.
Neurosis is a term mainly used today by followers of Freudian thinking to describe mental disorders caused by past anxiety, often that has been repressed. This concept is more usually known today as psychological trauma.
Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian doctor of medicine and a psychoanalyst, a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. The author of several influential books, The Impulsive Character (1925), The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Character Analysis (1933), and The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), he became one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry.
Orgone is a pseudoscientific concept variously described as an esoteric energy or hypothetical universal life force. Originally proposed in the 1930s by Wilhelm Reich, and developed by Reich's student Charles Kelley after Reich's death in 1957, orgone was conceived as the anti-entropic principle of the universe, a creative substratum in all of nature comparable to Mesmer's animal magnetism (1779), to the Odic force (1845) of Carl Reichenbach and to Henri Bergson's élan vital (1907). Orgone was seen as a massless, omnipresent substance, similar to luminiferous aether, but more closely associated with living energy than with inert matter. It could allegedly coalesce to create organization on all scales, from the smallest microscopic units—called "bions" in orgone theory—to macroscopic structures like organisms, clouds, or even galaxies.
Emma Eckstein (1865–1924) was an Austrian author. She was "one of Sigmund Freud's most important patients and, for a short period of time around 1897, became a psychoanalyst herself". She has been described as "the first woman analyst", who became "both colleague and patient" for Freud. As analyst, while "working mainly in the area of sexual and social hygiene, she also explored how 'daydreams, those "parasitic plants", invaded the life of young girls'."
The genital stage in psychoanalysis is the term used by Sigmund Freud to describe the final stage of human psychosexual development. The individual develops a strong sexual interest in people outside of the family.
In Freudian psychology, psychosexual development is a central element of the psychoanalytic sexual drive theory. Freud believed that personality developed through a series of childhood stages in which pleasure seeking energies from the child became focused on certain erogenous areas. An erogenous zone is characterized as an area of the body that is particularly sensitive to stimulation. The five psychosexual stages are the oral, the anal, the phallic, the latent, and the genital. The erogenous zone associated with each stage serves as a source of pleasure. Being unsatisfied at any particular stage can result in fixation. On the other hand, being satisfied can result in a healthy personality. Sigmund Freud proposed that if the child experienced frustration at any of the psychosexual developmental stages, they would experience anxiety that would persist into adulthood as a neurosis, a functional mental disorder.
Theodor Reik was a psychoanalyst who trained as one of Freud's first students in Vienna, Austria, and was a pioneer of lay analysis in the United States.
Wilhelm Stekel was an Austrian physician and psychologist, who became one of Sigmund Freud's earliest followers, and was once described as "Freud's most distinguished pupil". According to Ernest Jones, "Stekel may be accorded the honour, together with Freud, of having founded the first psycho-analytic society.". However, a phrase used by Freud in a letter to Stekel, "the Psychological Society founded by you," suggests that the initiative was entirely Stekel's. Jones also wrote of Stekel that he was "a naturally gifted psychologist with an unusual flair for detecting repressed material." Freud and Stekel later had a falling-out, with Freud announcing in November 1912 that "Stekel is going his own way". A letter from Freud to Stekel dated January 1924 indicates that the falling out was on interpersonal rather than theoretical grounds, and that at some point Freud developed a low opinion of his former associate. He wrote: "I...contradict your often repeated assertion that you were rejected by me on account of scientific differences. This sounds quite good in public but it doesn't correspond with the truth. It was exclusively your personal qualities - usually described as character and behavior - which made collaboration with you impossible for my friends and myself." Stekel's works are translated and published in many languages.
Franz Gabriel Alexander was a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst and physician, who is considered one of the founders of psychosomatic medicine and psychoanalytic criminology.
Freudo-Marxism is a loose designation for philosophical perspectives informed by both the Marxist philosophy of Karl Marx and the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. It has a rich history within continental philosophy, beginning in the 1920s and 1930s and running since through critical theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism.
Otto Fenichel was a psychoanalyst of the so-called "second generation".
Resistance, in psychoanalysis, refers to the client's defence mechanisms that emerge from unconscious content coming to fruition through process. Resistance is the repression of unconscious drives from integration into conscious awareness.
"Concerning Specific Forms of Masturbation" is a 1922 essay by Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. It was written while he led the Vienna Outpatient Clinic for sexually-related problems and is an early work in his career which was to develop around the subject of human sexuality.
Freud's seduction theory was a hypothesis posited in the mid-1890s by Sigmund Freud that he believed provided the solution to the problem of the origins of hysteria and obsessional neurosis. According to the theory, a repressed memory of an early childhood sexual abuse or molestation experience was the essential precondition for hysterical or obsessional symptoms, with the addition of an active sexual experience up to the age of eight for the latter.
Within the work of the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), orgastic potency is a human's natural ability to experience an orgasm with certain psychosomatic characteristics and resulting in full sexual gratification.
This is a list of writings published by Sigmund Freud. Books are either linked or in italics.
Edward Bibring (1894–1959) was an Austrian/American psychoanalyst. He studied philosophy and history at the University of Czernowitz until the first World War. After his military service he went to study medicine at the University of Vienna, and later was accepted for training by the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, in which he became an associate member from 1925, and then a full member in 1927. He was closely associated with Sigmund Freud. He was an co-editor of the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse for a brief period. In 1921 he married his fellow analyst Grete L. Bibring, and in 1941 the pair emigrated to the US.
