Good answer, even if I don't much agree. Some specifics:
This is a bit over dramatic. For years it is true groups squabbled over his teachings, claimed their own version etc... And it is in this decades long debate if you will that rendered it useless many times. However, not because it was not useful, but because while people were squandering the status quo of psychoanalysis other fields were actually advancing.
Psychoanalysis is indeed useful, even if often in spite of itself. There is something to it, but it has serious conception challenges to overcome.
It is no accident that it fragmented into several competing lines almost from the very start: it is by design too dogmatic and too personal to be effective as much more than
clinical mythology (a more accurate and descriptive label than the traditional "psychoanalysis"). Unfortunately, the self-perception of profesionals in the field does not help in this regard. Freud wanted to be a scientist but his methodology (and personal goals) very much destroyed that possibility.
Which is, in fact, a shame. There is much to be learned of serious, even urgent practical value from the meddlings of Freud and his disciples in the matters of symbolism, values and personal desires. But what we have actually learned, we did largely by fighting the preconceptions and mistifications of the main names of the field. It is noteworthy that to this day they contradict each other and it doesn't really make much of a difference to the practice of psychoanalysis. That is as good a piece of evidence of how tentative and ultimately unreliable their theoretical basis is as one could ask.
I think if you were aware of current views from actual Psychiatrists you would see a different view emerging.
I live in Brazil, were psychoanalysis never quite fell out of favor, and psychiatrists often work in tandem with them. I'm afraid I have still to experience that situation you describe.
As I just said, it was indirection, complacency, wishful thinking on his "followers" that rendered it not relevant.
Really? Because it seems to me that, as would be expected by those who know the merits of the scientific method, it was the competition among Freud's vision and those of his disciples that paved the way for the rise of some practical (if not really scientific) value to his ideas. There is no shortage of evidence on how Freud had to overcome (relutantly, from all appearances) his own attachment to his ideas even in life, and despite a well-documented lack of patience for disagreement.
Meanwhile, there were still many scientists/psychiatrists putting his theories to the test.
Of course. They will have to deal somehow with the very abstract, if not all-out imaginary, nature of most of his concepts, however.
That is not to say that it is not worthwhile. On the contrary, I think that we have a lot indeed to gain from those studies. But the end result will have little resemblance to Freud's ideas. His pionerism was great. His ideas as he presented them, not so much. To be fair, some of his followers were if anything even worse, Lacan particularly.
(...)
Clearly not all of Freud's theories lasted or seem useful, but opening up the field of psychoanalyzing people will most certainly last.
Oh yes, it certainly will. No argument there. I wonder how long it will be credited to Freud or called Psychoanalysis, however. After all, ultimately Freud had very little clue about what he was doing.
In my opinion there are two reasons the stigma is as strong as it is. One, ignorance. Two, the treatment methods are time intensive, and cost prohibitive when compared to CBT methods.
If I may, that is something of a blessing in disguise. Psychoanalysis (in Brazil at least) is often somewhat less expensive in the short run than more scientific psychotherapy. Being time intensive means that the patients are often somewhat guarded for long periods of time, which can be an advantage in some cases. Incidentally, homeopathy fulfills much the same role here as well - it has no true medical value, of course, but it does offer some much-needed interaction and attention that is often lacking in other venues.
That is no reason to accept the conceptual mess and mystification that plague psychoanalysis, but it doesn't mean that it is useless either. Just in bad need of some major questioning and redefinition.
Big digression of course to this thread, but the evidence from modern experts seems to suggest superstition, subjective memories and dreams, the unconscious and other areas that are still unknown, are still relevant, and will be for a long time.
That is basically true, but also largely a factor of how ill-understood and unchallenged the reliance on mystifications is, even in this day. Psychoanalysis has done much to expose that reality, and even more to perpetuate it. Dreams and subjectivism will of course remain relevant (although dreams will IMO eventually be seem mainly as a symptom and not as the oracle of sorts that it is often understood to be), but superstition is not something to be accepted so casually.
