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Editorial

Analyze This!

by Rick Lewis

“Know yourself!” has been a motto and an ideal for philosophers from Socrates onwards. Guiding people on the path to self-knowledge was also the aim of a thinker not generally seen as a philosopher, namely Sigmund Freud. He developed a whole range of revolutionary theories about human psychology including the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, repression, and transference. These formed the basis for psychoanalysis, which is a system of theories about the workings of the mind, an approach to treating psychological illnesses and a set of techniques for trying to find out more about ourselves through a dialogue between a patient and a therapist. Perhaps helped by the frenetic insecurity of modern urban life, Freud’s psychoanalytic movement spread from his native Vienna right around the world.

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