# psychoanalysis a system of mental therapy developed in 1894 by Sigmund Freud. It depended upon the following practices for its effects: The patient was made to talk about and recall his childhood for years while the practitioner brought about a transfer of the patient's personality to his own and searched for hidden sexual incidents believed by Freud to be the only cause of aberration. The practitioner read sexual significances into all statements and evaluated them for the patient along sexual lines. Each of these points later proved to be based upon false premises and incomplete research, accounting for their lack of result and the subsequent failure of the subject and its offshoots. Also called Freudian analysis.