Psychoanalysis, Geography and

Psychoanalysis is a discipline founded by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) at the beginning of the 20th century and subsequently developed by analysts such as Anna Freud, Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, and Donald Winnicott. Psychoanalysis consists of theories of human subjectivity and therapeutic practices that are primarily concerned with the amelioration of neurotic symptoms. It differs from conventional psychiatry and cognitive-behavioral therapies in its use of free association as a technique for accessing unconscious mental processes, its insistence on the importance of sexuality in the formation of psychical conflict, and its refusal to equate the ego with the subject.

In Freudian-Lacanian analysis, the analyst attempts to position himself or herself as a screen for the analysand's unconscious projections. Instead of engaging in conventional conversation, the analyst offers only ...