I am not a psychoanalyst. When someone mentions an analyst these days, they are usually the butt of a joke — aloof, silent, more interested in obscure theories than in your actual life.

Beyond cartoons, we think of psychoanalysis (if we think of it at all) more as a form of therapy than a form of learning. At its best, we imagine a psychoanalyst relieving our anxiety or depression through empathic responses to our thoughts and feelings, or perhaps bringing conscious awareness to whatever we are unconsciously doing. At worst, we picture someone lying on a couch, talking, while someone else sits behind it, not talking. (The unlikeliness that this arrangement should be helpful to anyone is one reason why there are so many actual cartoons about it.)

But those of us who read and write what is known as psychoanalytic theory behold a richer vision, a wider world formed by the method and ideas originally developed by Freud, a vision deeply informed by what happens in our clinical practices, and vice versa. Through this mutual formation of theory and practice emerges a picture of psychoanalysis that is as much a kind of

© Psychology Today