Top Psychoanalytic Theory Flashcards

In the late 1800s, science was making rapid progress toward a unified understanding of reality: Newton’s theory of physics, and Darwin’s theory of biology, were so successful that they seemed poised to explain nearly everything about the natural world. Yet there was a problem - all that science still barely touched the mysteries of human behavior and the human mind.

Sigmund Freud set out to change that. He wanted to develop a new science, called “psychology,” or “the science of the mind.” Psychology, he believed, would help bring out understanding of ourselves up to speed with our understanding of the world around us.

That task has proved far more challenging than Freud anticipated. But his ideas are still used in the practice of psychoanalysis, which can help alleviate mental distress and illness (this is called clinical psychoanalysis). Psychoanalytic theory is also widely used in the study of literature, where it can shed light on the deep human struggles and mindsets that underlie much of the world’s writing and oral storytelling.