Psychoanalysis

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Psychoanalysis (or Freudian psychology) is a body of ideas developed by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud and continued by others. It is primarily devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior, although it can also be applied to societies. Psychoanalysis has three main components:

1. a method of investigation of the mind and the way one thinks;
2. a systematized set of theories about human behavior;
3. a method of treatment of psychological or emotional illness.

Sourced

• How such an elaborate theory could have become so widely accepted – on the basis of no systematic evidence or critical experiments, and in the face of chronic failures of therapeutic intervention in all of the major classes of mental illness... – is something that sociologists of science and popular culture have yet to fully explain.
  • Paul Churchland The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul (1st ed.). MIT Press. 1995. pp. 181. ISBN 0-26-203224-4.