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'''[[Psychoanalytic ]] [[theory]]''' is a general term for approaches to [[psychoanalysis]] which attempt to provide a [[conceptual ]] framework more-or-less independent of [[clinical ]] [[practice ]] rather than based on empirical [[analysis ]] of clinical cases.

The term often attaches to conceptual uses of analysis in [[critical theory]], [[literary criticism|literary]], [[film criticism|film]], or [[other ]] art criticism, broader [[intersubjective ]] phenomena (for example, those broadly conceived as "[[cultural]]" or "[[social]]" in [[nature]]), [[religion]], [[law]], or other non-clinical contexts, sometimes signifying its use as a [[hermeneutic]] or interpretative framework. In some respects this can resemble [[phenomenology]] insofar as it attempts to account for [[consciousness]] and [[unconscious]]ness in a more or less eidetic fashion, although there are inherent conflicts between phenomenology as a study of consciousness and the frequent psychoanalytic emphasis on the unconscious or non-coincidence of consciousness with itself. (Unlike those who take up psychoanalysis for clinical practice, those with [[theoretical ]] interests often see little [[value ]] in spending [[time ]] as an [[analysand]].)

[[Sigmund Freud]], [[Melanie Klein]], and [[Jacques Lacan]] are often treated as canonical thinkers within [[psychoanalytic theory]], although there are considerable objections to their [[authority]], particularly from [[feminism]]. Precisely in the interest of a theoretical approach to psychoanalysis, [[Lacan ]] read [[Freud ]] with [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|G. W. F. Hegel's]] ''[[Phenomenology of Spirit]]''. Major thinkers within psychoanalytic theory include [[Nicholas Abraham]], [[Serge Leclaire]], [[Michel Foucault]], [[Julia Kristeva]], [[Slavoj Žižek]], [[Jacques Derrida]], [[René Major]], [[Luce Irigaray]], and [[Jacques-Alain Miller]]; their [[work ]] is anything but unitary — [[Derrida]], for example, has remarked that virtually the entirety of Freud's [[metapsychology]], while possessing some strategic value previously necessary to the elaboration of psychoanalysis, ought to be discarded at this point, whereas [[Miller ]] is sometimes taken as heir [[apparent ]] to Lacan because of his editorship of Lacan's [[seminars]], his interest in analysis is even more [[philosophical ]] than clinical, whereas Major has questioned the complicity of clinical psychoanalysis with various forms of totalitarian [[government]].

Some of the theoretical orientation of psychoanalysis in both [[German ]] and [[French ]] and, later, American contexts results in part from its [[separation ]] from [[psychiatry]] and institutionalisation closer to departments of [[philosophy]] and [[literature ]] (or American cultural studies programs). Psychoanalytic theory heavily influenced the work of [[Frantz Fanon]], [[Herbert Marcuse]], [[Louis Althusser]], and [[Cathy Caruth]], among [[others ]] (the implications for these is exemplary in their [[dispersion]]; [[Fanon]]'s interests were in racial and colonial [[identity]], whereas [[Marcuse ]] and [[Althusser ]] [[represent ]] distinct [[Marxist ]] positions that, among other things, attempt to use psychoanalysis in the study of [[ideology]], whereas Caruth, coming from a background in [[Paul de Man|de Manian]] [[deconstruction]] and [[working ]] in comparative literature, has articulated notions of [[Psychological trauma|trauma]] through [[literary ]] studies informed by philosophy, [[psychology]], [[neurology]], and [[Freudian ]] and [[Lacanian ]] theory). Theory can be so expansive a container as to include the work of [[Gilles Deleuze]] and [[Félix Guattari]], who believed psychoanalysis ultimately radically reductionist and strongly opposed the [[psychiatric ]] institutions of their time.

[[Category:Psychoanalytic theory| ]][[Category:Psychological theories]][[Category:Critical theory]]