The devastation wrought by Freud, and by Freudian-inspired psychotherapy/ counselling, on the USA is all the greater for being almost unappreciated. Indeed, it could be said that modern political correctness-/ social justice warrior-type Leftism is the product of Freud - not of Marx.
(There is very little socialism or communism in the USA - and what is regarded as such, is nothing-like the primarily economic system devised by Marx and his followers.)
I realised some time ago that professional psychotherapy was an essentially immoral activity. But I did not properly appreciate how far it had gone in the USA until I realised on a month long visit that, of the people I met (mostly academic faculty, doctors and graduate students) all but one had had, or was still having, professional psychotherapy.
My contention is that the New Left - the mid-nineteen-sixties Leftism of identity politics, rather than economics - began in the USA, and an essential element in this was the mid-twentieth century domination of Freud among the US ruling elites. From the US it spread to the rest of the West.
In a nutshell: from the summer of 1967, Freud replaced Marx at the core of international Leftism.
Nowadays, Leftism is a purported system of therapy. Leftism is ultimately evil; but with the sixties New Left the excuse for Leftism changed; it changed from economic (alleviation of poverty) to therapeutic (alleviation of victimhood).
The increasingly totalitarian society we inhabit is justified by its therapeutic benefits. The Establishment are really keen on psychotherapy and therapeutic conversations for all, so is the mass media,
so are the arts?
Since I became a Christian, I can understand the damage of Freud and psychotherapy more clearly - because a simplified and weaponised version of the psychodynamic approach has substantially replaced Christianity in both public and private discourse.
There are many horrible effects. Psychotherapy hollows-out a person. A heart-less superficiality of character is one - that bland, fluent, unconvincing affect which dominate US public life. The analysis of all human situations in terms of therapy - so that politics has become (by its own account) a kind of giant psychotherapeutic machine supposedly designed to alleviate human suffering.
Perhaps primarily, psychotherapy is what induces the victim mentality - because psychotherapy regards psychological problems as primary, and traces the roots of problem to 'other people' - indirectly, and all the more effectively for it, therapy always implies that that ultimately everybody is a victim.
To engage in psychotherapy is to internalise victimhood; and when psychotherapy is applies at a social level it discovers one after another, then another victim group.
Of course psychotherapy does not really work as a medical treatment; and of course sexual relationships between therapists and clients are extremely common/ normal. But all this merely clarifies that what the Freudian perspective actually does is not what it purports to do.
What Freud does is promote the mind-set, indeed the primary metaphysical assumptions, which are desired by the secular Left.
And, although psychotherapy is spectacularly un-successful at curing illness, or making people happier - it is extremely effective at inducing bedrock, deep-rooted, self-validating Leftism both in individuals, and - mainly - in culture.
