psychoanalyze
Americanverb (used with object)
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of psychoanalyze
Explanation
To psychoanalyze is to use a particular kind of psychiatric therapy to treat mental illness or disorders. When doctors psychoanalyze patients, they encourage discussion of their feelings, childhood, and dreams. If a therapist psychoanalyzes you, you'll probably sit in a chair or lie on a couch while you talk about your feelings. A doctor who practices this kind of therapy is called a psychoanalyst, and her goal may be to help you realize the unconscious conflicts that make it hard for you to feel happy. The first person to psychoanalyze a patient was the Austrian doctor Sigmund Freud, in the 1890s.
Vocabulary lists containing psychoanalyze
Florida's B.E.S.T. Roots: psych
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“I don’t psychoanalyze the people who talk to me, just like I don’t psychoanalyze myself, thank God. Which you want me to do, I know, and I’m not going to.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 24, 2025
“And I don’t want you to psychoanalyze me either.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2025
Parson says she was acutely aware of the challenge of illustrating the interior lives of the women, but did not set out to psychoanalyze them in movement.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 9, 2022
And she will psychoanalyze me, telling me I have mental problems.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 13, 2022
To psychoanalyze my grandmother’s heart palpitations: they were the manifestations of grief.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
The making of this classic drama is a story that’s been told, retold, psychoanalyzed and strip-mined for leftovers — see “The Godfather: The Corleone Family Cookbook,” just one of a library’s worth of spinoff books.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 22, 2021
A suspect is psychoanalyzed for motive, the investigation lags, dread spreads, conspiracy infects the culture.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 26, 2017
That’s what happens when your choices are relentlessly questioned and ridiculed, your past probed and psychoanalyzed in the tabloids.
From Salon ● Jun. 23, 2014
“I’ve never psychoanalyzed it, man,” Senator Marco Rubio says.
From New York Times ● Dec. 22, 2012
Heylmun and Civille have done the same thing—only they haven’t psychoanalyzed their feelings; they’ve psychoanalyzed their feelings for mayonnaise and Oreo cookies.
From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
It really made no sense, but more than psychoanalyzing our former president, one should look at the consequences, which are dramatic.
From Slate ● Feb. 25, 2026
For me, it's about kind of psychoanalyzing and getting into why exactly she's the way she is.
From Salon ● Nov. 28, 2024
We quite properly try to avoid psychoanalyzing prominent newsmakers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 19, 2022
The idea of isolation and containment — this is me psychoanalyzing myself — may be part of my psychological makeup.
From The Verge ● Oct. 9, 2019
Vijay smartly resists psychoanalyzing her, implying that the china-shop bulls in our families can be survived but never entirely explained away.
From New York Times ● Feb. 1, 2019
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
