"If psychoanalysis were taken seriously, truly, practically, it would be an almost incredible earthquake. Indescribable. Even for psychoanalysts." J. Derrida, E. Roudinesco. What tomorrow... This article is aimed at a brief introduction to psychoanalysis as one of the approaches to working with the human psyche. Each area of ​​psychological education and psychological knowledge (psychiatry, clinical psychology, psychology, psychoanalysis, etc.) presupposes its own content and its own special approaches and methods in working with the human psyche. Psychoanalysis is that area of ​​knowledge about a person that has largely given rise to a wave of protests , criticism and outright indignation. And why?...The discovery of the unconscious, as one of the registers of the subject’s psyche, on the one hand, contributed to undermining the foundations of classical philosophy in the interpretation of human consciousness and human nature as a whole, and on the other hand, devealized the “dark” side of the human being. The discovery of the “demons” living within us is what first caused cultural resistance. The “Copernican revolution” in classical philosophy, caused by the discovery of the unconscious, is beyond the scope of this text, since it is largely intended for professional circles. What “demons” are we talking about? About those forces that Sigmund Freud called “drives” (or “mythical essences”), and which, among other things, “hiding” in the unconscious, determine the nature of a person’s actions and much of what constitutes the overall space of human relationships. Jacques Lacan spoke quite clearly on this matter: “The whole point is the eternal ambiguity of the term unconscious. The existence of the unconscious is presupposed, of course, by the fact that somewhere in the speaking being there is something that knows more about him than he does, but such a model of the world is, of course, unacceptable.” But how can we live, first of all, with this “something like that” that knows more about us than we do ourselves? How is it possible and is it even possible to control this “something”?... In addition, the destructive principles inherent in human nature, which Freud speaks of as follows: “Psychological and, to an even greater extent, psychoanalytic research show that the deepest essence of man constitute instinctive impulses that have an elementary, spontaneous nature and are aimed at satisfying certain initial needs. These instinctive urges in themselves are neither good nor bad. We classify them and their manifestations in this way only in relation to the needs and requirements of human society. It must be admitted that all the impulses that are considered evil and bad by society - let's take selfish and cruel impulses as an example - are precisely such primitive, primitive, primordial instincts." This is the vector in the interpretation of human nature that suggests labeling the psychoanalyst as "anti -Locke." According to Locke, man is good by nature, but he has been “spoiled” by civilization, and the natural state of human society is characterized by equality, the spirit of freedom, independence. And psychoanalysis refutes all this, rather confirming the correctness of Hobbes’s views on human society. in which there is a “war of all against all” and in which “Man is a wolf to man” (Homo homini lupus est). This implies the context of relationships between states, but it can be designated as one of the examples of a psychoanalytic orientation in the interpretation of human nature. Freud talks about all this. writes as follows: “The prehistory of mankind is replete with murders. What our children study in schools as world history is, in essence, a description of a series of exterminations of entire nations (...). War, however, is impossible.