Psychoanalysis
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a form of therapeutic treatment originated by Professor Freud of Vienna. In its essence it is a system of psychological inquiry into the subconscious psychic forces at the base of psychic disturbances, preliminary to the formulation of a method of treatment in cases of neurasthenia, hysteria and the like. The principle lying at the foundation of his theory is that these psychical manifestations spring from emotional experiences that have been forgotten or repressed into the field of unconsciousness, while still holding their place in the mind. Professor Freud's method of treatment seeks to establish the connection between the neurotic manifestations of the patient and the causes that lie hidden in his memory. Its purpose is to pierce the obscurity in which these latent ideas are embedded and by revealing the connection between them and their symptoms to bring about their disappearance. In this connection he developed his theory on the nature of dreams, which in his view were merely distortions of unrealized desires. In the treatment the patient is led to repeat what he remembers of his dreams and to reveal the flowing course of his aspirations and thoughts. On the basis of the knowledge so acquired the physician shows the connection between cause and effect to the patient and dissipates the neurotic condition by rationalizing it. There is unquestionably much that is sound in Psychoanalysis, but both the inquiry and the treatment call for great sagacity, skill, and patience, and these qualities are not always present in those who endeavor to apply its principles. In the United States the theory has received further development and is being used with success in the milder forms of Associationists and of Herbart, hold that nervous affections.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 Freud was still alive in Vienna (he died in London in 1939), and psychoanalysis was a rising medical treatment for what the entry calls "neurasthenia, hysteria and the like" oday, current diagnostic manuals — hysteria vanished from the American DSM in 1980, neurasthenia long before that. Through the 1950s psychoanalysts dominated American psychiatry, but from the 1960s onward drug treatments, cognitive behavioural therapy and evidence-based trials displaced them; the wish-fulfilment theory of dreams is not accepted by sleep researchers today. Freud is now read mostly as a thinker rather than practised as a physician: analytic training institutes survive, insurance rarely pays for multi-year couch work, and psychiatry residencies teach neuroscience and psychopharmacology instead. What has lasted is the entry's core premise — that experiences outside conscious awareness shape behaviour — which survives in modern research on implicit memory and unconscious processing, though by routes Freud would not recognise.
Written for this edition, 2026.