ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis is, in people’s minds, a clinical method of psychotherapy. In the minds of psychoanalysts it is a profession, and has been and still is to a degree considered a different calibre of psychotherapy. The fragmentation of psychoanalysis into schools did not change much the psychoanalysts’ attitude that they are different from the other specialists in the mental health field. Point in fact: psychoanalysis started from within the first recognizable psychotherapeutic endeavour. Nevertheless, there is no denying that the main discoveries that made its psychotherapeutic practice unique and distinguishable came from Freud’s other discoveries, which he made outside the clinical practice. Those discoveries influenced the practice of psychoanalysis in a way that is clear in the manner that Freud chartered its protocol.
