Abstract

As a therapeutic technique, psychoanalysis had variable but at times spectacular results, as depicted in the film A Dangerous Method. Starting as a clinical practice, psychoanalysis developed a theory of the unconscious that encompasses a wide range of phenomena, both normal and pathological, by problematizing the former and normalizing the latter. More generally psychoanalysis developed a wide range of critical theories that have had a direct bearing on the study of politics, culture and organizations. As a result, psychoanalysis has had a considerable influence on numerous disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, linguistics and others. The originality of its ideas and their ability to illuminate hitherto opaque phenomena made psychoanalysis an important cultural current in the last hundred years whose influence reaches outside scholarly and clinical contexts, in arts, music and popular culture.