In 1900 the Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, arguing that dreams are disguised expressions of unconscious wishes and setting out his ideas on the unconscious, repression and infantile sexuality. From this grew psychoanalysis, both a clinical method based on free association and dream analysis and an intellectual movement with its own institutions and disciples. Freud's later concepts, including the ego, id and superego, extended the theory into a general model of the mind. The approach drew sustained controversy over its scientific status even as it gained wide cultural influence.
It reshaped how the modern self, mind and human behaviour were understood across psychology, medicine, the arts and everyday self-interpretation, making the inner life a central concern of twentieth-century culture.
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