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<!-- [[Freud]]'s third and broadest category comprises his work on culture (which is based largely on the view that culture is a product of the diversion or [[sublimation]] of sexual energy) and art, which provides the starting-point for the many varieties of [[psychoanalytic criticism]]. -->
Although the history of [[psychoanalysis]] is inseparable from that of [[Freud]]'s life and of the long self-analysis which led him to write his great ''[[Interpretation of Dreams]]'' (1900), it is clear that his new science is rooted in the traditions of nineteenth-century psychology and biology. [[Freud]]'s ventures into [[anthropology]], which he views as an integral part of his new scientific discipline, are also influenced by nineteenth-century theories of evolution and by their attendant [[eurocentrism]]; hence the analogy between the "mental life of savages and neurotics" posited in ''[[Totem and Taboo]]'' (1913), and the argument that the life of an indiviudal re-enacts or repeats the life of the species. It is also clear that [[Freud]]'s descriptions of the workings of the [[unconscious]], with it s flows of energy, and of [[libido]] and its mechanisms of discharge, owe much to the physics and hydraulics of his age.
<!-- [[Freud]] constantly revises and reworks his theories, and all the modifications he introduces are closely related to developments at the clinical level as he gradually abandons the therapeutic technique of hypnosis and [[catharsis]] in favor of the [[talking cure]], and moves from his early [[seduction theory]] of [[hysteria]] to a theory of both [[neurosis]] and normal [[development]] that is based upon the discovery of the [[Oedipus complex]] and its vital importance in psychosexual development. Yet despite all the changes that are introduced, there is a constant emphasis on the [[unconscious'' and on sexuality, defined in such broad terms as to include the oral and anal dimensions and not merely the narrowly genital or procreative dimension. It is the emphasis on sexuality that leads to the major disagreements between [[Freud]] and [[Jung]], whom the former at one point regarded as his crown prince. [[Freud]]'s theories are obviously not beyond criticism, but they have had an incalculable impact on the twentieth-century vision of sexuality, not least by insisting the children are not asexual and have a sexual life of their own.<ref>1905a. 1908a.</ref> The best account of the gradual development of the technique of [[psychoanalysis]] is that provided by [[Freud]] himself in his correspondence with [[Wilhelm Fliess]], with whom he collaborated in the 1980s, in the studies n [[hysteria]] coauthored with Breuer, and in the five published case studies. -->
The technique that evolved is the method of [[free association]], with the patient or anlaysand analysand lying on a couch and with the analyst sitting slightly to the rear and out of eyeshot. The [[patient]] is required to tell everything and omit nothing; the [[analyst]] to listen to everything and to privilege nothing. [[Free association]] around [[dreams]] or [[memories]] allows [[unconscious]] [[chain]]s of [[fantasies]] and [[wish]]es to be reconstructed and then interpreted so as to uncover underlying structures, which, typically, relate to the [[Oedipus complex]] and [[repressed]] childhood [[memories]], usually with a sexual content.
<!-- Although [[dream]]s are described by [[Freud]] as "the royal road to the unconscious," (1900) it should be noted that the [[psychoanalyst]]'s raw material is not the [[unconscious]] itself (which is by definition inaccesible), but material that has already been shaped by the [[dream-work]]. -->
