Psychoanalysis

In clinical practice, psychoanalysis is a form of long-term talk therapy in which a patient explores unconscious thoughts, feelings and early experiences with a trained analyst, chiefly through free association and the interpretation of dreams, in order to relieve psychological distress by bringing unconscious conflict into conscious awareness. The method was developed by Sigmund Freud beginning in the 1890s, building on his clinical work with patients suffering from what was then called hysteria, and it grew over the following decades into both a distinct body of psychological theory and a specific clinical treatment offered by trained psychoanalysts and psychiatrists. As a treatment, psychoanalysis is typically conducted over an extended course of frequent sessions, distinguishing it from the shorter, more structured courses of treatment used in later talk therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy.