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[[Freud]] describes [[psychoanalysis]] as comprising:

[[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.

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 elevel as he gradually abandons the therapeutic technique of hypnosis and [[catharsis]] in avor 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.

[[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 iwth [[Wilhelm Fliess]], the ear, nost and throat specialist with whom he collaborated in the 1980s, in the studies n [[hysteria]] coauthored with Breuer, and in the five published case studies.

[[Freud]] never claimed that his method was a universal panacea, but once remarked with typically pessimistic wit that it could transform "hysterical misery" into "common unhappiness."<ref>1893-5.</ref>

Although [[psychoanalysis]] is widely practiced and has had an important influence on related therapeutic methods, it has never been defined in either medical or legal terms.

[[Freud]]'s own career was punctuated by a series of breaks with oleagues to whom he had once been close, and the history of the psychoanalytic movement is one of splits and schisms as well as of international expansion.