What’s Left of Psychoanalysis? A Freudian slip?

Good question! To me psychoanalysis has been for a long time more associated with pseudo science or quackery.

In the 1970s/1980s in Germany it was almost a fashion statement to see a psychoanalyst. At parties, people would exchange their latest psychoanalytic adventures and so on. People would compete to get appointments with the best and busiest psychoanalysts in town.

"... After several decades of declining influence, psychoanalysis is now enjoying a revival of public interest and intellectual esteem. Recent graduates from the analytic institutes are finding their services in demand. Gone is the dour, conventional, Germanic Sigmund Freud we knew when psychoanalysis was the dominant mode in postwar American psychiatry. That Freud was an anti-utopian, who once joked that the goal of analysis was to replace neurotic misery with ordinary human unhappiness. Now we have the anarchic Freud, the sexual liberator, the enemy of repression. This battle over the true meaning of his work began when he was still alive and has never really stopped. Freud now seems to have been repurposed for a new era of consumer demand. ..."

What’s Left of Psychoanalysis? | City Journal With its original premises overthrown in many respects, a refashioned discipline can still help reconcile us to our limitations and sufferings.