Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a theory of mental life and a method of treatment that explores unconscious processes through speech, interpretation, and the therapeutic relationship.

Free association: A technique in which a person speaks whatever comes to mind without deliberate selection or censorship. It supplies uncensored material for interpreting unconscious thoughts and conflicts.
Sigmund Freud: An Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis and developed influential theories of unconscious mental life. His writings and clinical practice established psychoanalysis as a distinct approach.
Unconscious mind: Mental processes and contents that are not currently available to conscious awareness. Psychoanalysis treats unconscious activity as a major influence on thought and behavior.
Behavior therapy: A psychological treatment that uses learning principles to change observable behavior and its conditions. It prioritizes learned behavior and measurable change over interpretation of unconscious conflict.
Dream interpretation: The practice of interpreting dreams as expressions of psychological meaning rather than treating them only as literal narratives. Freud made dreams a central route to investigating unconscious wishes.
Josef Breuer: An Austrian physician whose treatment of Bertha Pappenheim influenced Freud’s early ideas about talking and symptoms. His work with Freud helped form the clinical approach preceding psychoanalysis.
Psychosexual development: Freud’s account of childhood development through stages organized around changing sources of bodily pleasure. It links adult personality and conflict to early developmental experiences.
Cognitive behavioral therapy: A structured psychotherapy that targets interactions among thoughts, emotions, and behavior. It typically uses explicit skills and present-focused goals rather than open-ended analysis.
Transference: The displacement of feelings and expectations from earlier relationships onto another person, especially a therapist. Feelings toward the analyst can make enduring relational patterns observable in treatment.
Anna O.: The pseudonym used for Bertha Pappenheim, a patient treated by Josef Breuer in a case later associated with the talking cure. Her case became a foundational story in psychoanalysis’s account of symptom relief through speech.

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