ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis is a branch of science developed by Sigmund Freud and his followers, devoted to the study of human psychology. It is usually considered to have three areas of application: a systematised body of knowledge about human behaviour; a method of investigating the mind; a modality of therapy for emotional illnesses or psychic suffering. The complex relationship between psychoanalysis and culture can be illustrated when we consider that it appeared in the end of XIX century, in Vienna, a cultural milieu in which the "intelligentsia" was developing innovations in many areas simultaneously. In Totem and Taboo Freud studied the resemblances between the mental life of savages and neurotics. The animistic mode of thinking is governed by what Freud called the omnipotence of thoughts, a projection of inner mental life onto the external world. In Civilization and Its Discontents, he enumerates the fundamental tensions between civilisation and the individual.
