Humans are born "polymorphously perverse"...

Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian Physician Sigmund Freud and his followers, which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior.
Psychoanalysis has three applications:

a method of investigation of the mind;

a systematized set of theories about human behavior;

a method of treatment of psychological or emotional illness.

Under the broad umbrella of psychoanalysis there are at least twenty-two different theoretical orientations regarding the underlying theory of understanding of human mentation and human development. The various approaches in treatment called "psychoanalytic" vary as much as the different theories do. In addition, the term refers to a method of studying child development.

Freudian psychoanalysis refers to a specific type of treatment in which the "analysand" (analytic patient) verbalizes thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst formulates the unconscious conflicts causing the patient's symptoms and character problems, and interprets them for the patient to create insight for resolution of the problems.

Important thinkers in this field whom we will aspire to read are: Alfred Adler, Nancy Chodorow, Erik Erikson, Ronald Fairbairn, Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud, Karen Horney, Ernest Jones, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Heinz Kohut, Jacques Lacan, Margaret Mahler, Otto Rank, Harry Stack Sullivan, Susan Sutherland Isaacs, Erich Fromm, Donald Winnicott, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and Edward Bernays, among others.