There is a branch of psychoanalysis that we
can hardly relate to the therapeutical work. This is called applied psychoanalysis. It was Freud's contribution that laid its foundations -
Freud being the author of some famous extra-clinical works like Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva (1907), Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (1910), Totem and Taboo
(1912-1913), etc. They dealt with mythology, anthropology, religion and biography of famous persons.
In short, Freud applied his clinical discoveries - such as
the mraning of dreams, the theory of the psychic apparatus and mostly the theory of neurosis - to the literary/historical characters or facts in order to understand their inner meaning.
Many specialists are actually still wondering whether psychoanalysis has the right to interfere into fields that has nothing to do with its specific realm of interest.
This question and others like it doesn't take into account the very obvious fact that all human activities, no matter what kind of, share the same principle, that is, they
spring or draw from the human inner soul (which is
.Otherwise, Freud had to study mythology, for example,
because, even from the very beginning of the development of psychoanalysis, there were some persons of his circle that drew his attention to some
striking similarities between the results of the clinical research and the mythological motifs and the religious ideas.
