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Psychoanalysis
Outside the Sigmund Freud Museum (Vienna).
Concepts Psychosexual development Psychosocial development (Erikson) Unconscious Preconscious Psychic apparatus Id, ego and super-ego Libido Drive Transference Countertransference Ego defenses Resistance Projection Denial
Important figures Alfred Adler Michael Balint Wilfred Bion Josef Breuer Nancy Chodorow Max Eitingon Erik Erikson Ronald Fairbairn Paul Federn Otto Fenichel Sándor Ferenczi Anna Freud Sigmund Freud Erich Fromm Harry Guntrip Karen Horney Ernest Jones Carl Jung Melanie Klein Heinz Kohut Jacques Lacan Ronald Laing Margaret Mahler Jacques-Alain Miller Otto Rank Sandor Rado Wilhelm Reich Joan Riviere Isidor Sadger James Strachey Ernst Simmel Harry Stack Sullivan Susan Sutherland Isaacs Donald Winnicott
Important works The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) The Ego and the Id (1923)
Schools of thought Self psychology Lacanian Jungian Object relations Interpersonal Relational Ego psychology
Training Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis British Psychoanalytic Council British Psychoanalytical Society Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research International Psychoanalytical Association World Association of Psychoanalysis
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The term psychic apparatus (also psychical apparatus, mental apparatus) denotes a central, theoretic construct of Freudian metapsychology, wherein:

We assume that mental life is the function of an apparatus to which we ascribe the characteristics of being extended in space and of being made up of several portions [ Id, ego, super-ego].

—Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940)

As a psychologist, Sigmund Freud used the German terms psychischer Apparat and seelischer Apparat, about the functioning of which he elaborates:

We picture the unknown apparatus, which serves the activities of the mind, as being really like an instrument constructed of several parts (which we speak of as ‘agencies’), each of which performs a particular function, and which have a fixed, spatial relation to one another: it being understood that by ‘spatial relation’ — ‘in front of’ and ‘behind’, ‘superficial’ and ‘deep’ — we merely mean, in the first instance, a representation of the regular succession of the functions.

—Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis (1926)

Freud proposed the psychic apparatus as solely a theoretic construct explaining the functioning of the mind, and not a neurologic structure of the brain:

It is a hypothesis, like so many others in the sciences: the very earliest ones have always been rather rough. ‘Open to revision’, we can say in such cases . . . the value of a ‘fiction’ of this kind . . . depends on how much one can achieve with its help.

—Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis (1926)

Moreover, in emphasizing the immateriality of the psychic apparatus, Dr. Freud dismissed the matter of its physical substance:

That is not a subject of psychological interest. Psychology can be as indifferent to it as, for instance, optics can be to the question of whether the walls of a telescope are made of metal or cardboard. We shall leave entirely to one side the material line of approach.

—Freud, The Question of Lay Analysis (1926)

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