ABSTRACT
It is the term ‘symptom’ that best encapsulates the origins of psychoanalysis in Freud’s medical practice. While other terms like ‘patient’ and ‘neurosis’ have given way to neologisms like ‘analysand’, ‘disorder’, etc., the concept of the symptom continues to be as relevant as ever before. It is the inconvenience caused by the symptom-especially when it takes on a pathological cast as in conversion hysteria or obsessive-compulsive neurosis-that prompts the analysand to seek psychoanalysis or one of the other modes of psychotherapy. In other words, the first interpretation of the symptom is made by the analysand themselves: it is he or she who generally decides to present himself or herself to an psychoanalyst rather than to a general practitioner.
