Freud’s beliefs do not apply to modern-day psychology

Freud has, for the most part, fallen completely out of favour in academia. In 1996, Psychological Science reached the conclusion that “[T]here is literally nothing to be said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas." A 2006 article in Newsweek magazine that called him "history's most debunked doctor” said that “many of his ideas were mindboggingly, catastrophically wrong.”^[1] Another author said that “no other notable figure in history was so fantastically wrong about nearly every important thing he had to say.”^[2] In 1975, the Nobel Prize-winning medical biologist Peter Medawar called psychoanalytic theory “the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century.”^[3] Psychoanalysis has a low cure rate and the realization that depression and anxiety can be regulated by medication made a mode of therapy whose treatment times reached into the hundreds of billable hours seem, at a minimum, inefficient, and, at worst, a scam.^[4] Most of his psychological theories have been disproved and by 1980, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders had removed almost every trace of Freudianism. Every one of his claims has been dismissed and could be debunked one by one. For example, there is no evidence that boys lust after their mothers and hate their fathers. He was totally, utterly wrong about gender. And his notion of “penis envy” is now both laughable and tragic.^[1] His theories have even proved damaging - and even dangerous - to certain segments of the population, especially women.^[1] Famously, Freud supposedly cured the “Wolf Man,” Sergius Pankejeff, but in fact he was consigned to psychoanalysis for an additional 60 years. Not surprisingly, Pankejeff considered Freud’s effect on his life a “catastrophe.”^[2]

[P1] Psychoanalysis has been debunked. [P2] Freud's beliefs are completely irrelevant.