In 1968, the author and his colleagues developed the new mechanism of plastic hinge based on the incremental theory of plasticity and derived the elastic-plastic stiffness matrices for one dimensional members. In 1979, extending the basic idea of the plastic hinge, the authors developed the new method of plastic analysis of plates and solid bodies using the ordinary finite element method and derived the elastic-plastic stiffness matrices. Later, the new method of plastic analysis was named “the plastic node method”. In this paper, the basic theory of the plastic node method was further developed for analyses of thermal elastic-plastic and dynamic behaviors of structures and derived stiffness equations. Using the new theory, several examples were analyzed and the result indicated successful application of the method.