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Why did Sigmund Freud choose the term “psychoanalysis” to describe his psychological method of treatment?
The term “psychoanalysis” combines two words of Greek origin. In their book, The language of psychoanalysis, Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) state that Freud first used the terms analysis, psychical analysis, psychological analysis and hypnotic analysis in his early article The neuro-psychoses of defence (1894); it was only later, in an article on the aetiology of neuroses published in French, that he introduced the term ‘psycho-analyse’; the German ‘Psychoanalyse’ made its first appearance in 1896, in Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence. The adoption of this term served as formal confirmation that catharsis under hypnosis and suggestion had been dropped and that the obtaining of material would henceforward depend exclusively on the rule of free association. (Laplanche & Pontalis 1973, p. 367).
The first part of the term is psyche, which purports the soul in all its rich complexity. Freud's emphasis on the soul made – according to Bettelheim (1982, p. 11) – his analysis different from all others. But what is the meaning of the latter part of the word “psychoanalysis”? Why analysis? Why not something else as well? And where does analysis come from?
Bettelheim is of the opinion that by coining the term “psychoanalysis” to describe his work, Freud wished to convey the thought that by isolation and examination of the neglected and hidden aspects of mind the path