Andrew Sullivan recently pondered the question “Is psychiatry a religion?” In that post, he quoted a retort to the accusation, and the key idea in it that he latched onto was that “the single common feature of all religious is a preoccupation with unseen sentient beings, of which psychiatry says nothing” which Sullivan drying countered with “Two words: Sigmund Freud.”

The only problem with that is that Freud’s stances are outrageously outdated and naive. It is no longer the predominant stance of psychiatrists, nor is it taught as anything more than a historical curiosity in psychiatry classes any longer. Granted, all of this is from my personal experience while working towards a cognitive neuropsychology minor in university (which I sadly abandoned for brevity’s sake), but nearly every aspect of Freud’s work was taught minimally and then a superseding work was introduced that explained all of the things Freud’s work did but better.

Say what you will about the subjectivity of psychiatry and psycho-analysis, but when it comes to Sigmund Freud, neither the man nor his work is sacrosanct.