The failure of traditional finance approaches to account for market failures and the resulting financial crises has led to the emergence of a new discipline, Behavioural Finance, which builds on the insight provided by a number of behavioural principles developed in psychological, sociological and anthropological studies. This survey opens with a brief outline of the basics of this new discipline against the background of the above-mentioned shortcomings of traditional finance approaches and is completed by an analysis of the principal axioms and thought processes constituting the theoretical underpinning of behavioural finance.