Is Psychoanalysis more than just a form of treatment?

Psychoanalysis has grown since Freud’s time in its applications to fields other than the clinical (although always retaining conceptual and practical links with the different forms of human suffering and their treatment). As a conceptual and methodological instrument, psychoanalysis is now firmly established in the work of social sciences, philosophy and the study of artistic creations. It is then, in the broadest sense, a method for learning about the human subject and desire. Since psychoanalysis seeks to explain how the mind works, it contributes truthful knowledge into whatever the human mind produces. In so doing it has had a potent influence on many aspects of civilization.