What Happened to Psychoanalysis?

The decline of influence of psychoanalysis in psychiatry and also in popular recognition prompts this inquiry. The origins of psychoanalysis in the massive contribution as well as the dominating style of one man, Freud, led to its widespread dissemination, succeeding as long as forces of opposition, present from the start, had low impact on it. Internal dissension among rival schools and the competition of other less expensive forms of therapy invited skepticism about its efficacy and validity. Medical treatment of mental symptoms offers a way of bypassing the arduous self-scrutiny analysis demands, and neuroscience can evade subjectivity. The psychoanalytic enterprise is part of the human sciences that are in partial eclipse in a world for which empirical demonstration is the sole truth criterion. Freud's essential discoveries, and their continuing relevance to treatment, remain to be reckoned with.