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The subject matter of psychoanalysis is centrally focused on the elucidation of the laws of human behavior as these can be inferred from the observational data obtained in the standardized setting of the psycho-analytic treatment situation. From its inception, psychoanalysis as a discipline has looked beyond its own therapeutic frontiers; it has attempted to articulate its findings with human activities in the broadest sense, i.e., to become the common psychological matrix for a general science of man.
Each of the papers in this section surveys the major scholarly contribution of psychoanalysis to one segment of this intellectual enterprise: to the humanities, to religion, and to the study of society. The pragmatic applications of psychoanalysis to service occupations such as medicine, education, jurisprudence, management, or public affairs are not our concern here.
This survey of the intellectual range of psychoanalysis begins by examining its applications to the field of the studia humanitatis. With slight modifications, this exposition follows the original subdivision of the humanities, developed in the early Renaissance, into four areas: biography (both historical and fictive), aesthetics (including literature, music, and the visual arts), history, and moral philosophy. Although none of the areas of interdisciplinary endeavor we are considering has