Of course, few people have ever been-through anything like a full 'analysis' - i.e. an hour, three times a week for several or many years, done by an accredited analyst who had himself been analyzed.
(Except for Freud himself. Founders of initiatory organizations, somehow, themselves never require the prolonged and systematic they require of their followers. Rudolf Steiner was the same in this regard. I suppose this exemplifies Weber's discussion of charisma and bureaucracy, and how the one invariably assimilates to the other.)
But a very high proportion of people in the USA, especially among the ruling and professional classes, have spent significant time in 'therapy' of one sort or another; and all these therapies are more-or-less-closely descended from Freud in terms of their broad assumptions, and effects.
(e.g. In a month at a medical school in Texas, I met only one person who had Not experienced psychotherapy.)
All sorts of aspects of psychoanalysis became embedded in US life. For example, the idea of psychological 'traumas' being The cause of 'problems' later - this assumption forms the basis of most modern biographies.
Or, the 'confessional' way of interacting; whereby people 'spill the beans' about themselves, their history and their feelings, as a major mode of social interaction, even among strangers - and the assumption that Not to do this is unhealthy: storing-up problems for the future.
Extending from this, is the notion that 'repressing' any feeling does harm, whereby expressing it - doing it - is healthy and a sign of good adjustment. This, especially and above all, in the realm of sex and sexuality; where in fact the anti-Freudian idea is that desires need to be 'acted-out' rather than being purely articulated and discussed.
('Strict' Freudian analysis takes places entirely within the consultation room.)
The archetypical American extraversion and action-orientation thereby fused with Freud's abstract intellectualism, to produce a kind of public and explicit drama from the (all-but endless) speaking and listening, thinking and discussing of strict psychoanalysis.
Consequently, psychoanalysis and 'therapy' of all kinds became, in the USA, heavily sexualized - with sexual relationships between therapists and clients almost normal, certainly unremarkable.
More generally, psychoanalysis led to the idea that 'it's good to talk', to interact, to socialize, to have lots and lots of 'friends'; and that these friends are (primarily) 'supportive' and 'encouraging' in terms of their comments.
And the flipside of this has been first to 'problematize' and then to punish the opposite: i.e. comments - or facial expressions - that make people 'feel bad'. Leading onto the ludicrous discourse of 'micro-aggressions' being developed, taken seriously; and then deployed as a core political weapon.
Similarly, the culture of 'analysis' and 'therapy' created and sustained the discourse and legislation based on 'unconscious racism' (or sexism, or *phobias) - which is posited as the primary cause of any difference in outcomes that disfavour an officially-privileged (i.e. officially labelled 'oppressed') group. This represents Freud's 'unconscious'; literalized and weaponized for social control.
Therefore, we can see that Freud was the origin of the New Left, with its psychological focus and (racial, sexual, etc.) 'victim groups'; which - from the middle 1960s - displaced the Old Left (which had been rooted in economics and class analysis).
The US way of understanding was quickly (almost instantly) exported to the rest of the world, mainly by domination of mass media, but also by the US status of political hegemony.
These and other themes were generated in the USA in the wake of the Freudian cultural-takeover back in the middle twentieth century. Freudian ideas (in culturally-adapted forms), in fact, became metaphysical assumptions: basic assumptions regarding the nature of reality - in particular the human condition.
Mainstream US life came to be rooted in the atheism, materialism, psychologism derived from Freud and therapy; combined with a hedonism (or utilitarianism) the Americans added to it.
This means that the framework of modern mass media - from news stories to movies and TV drama, and the interactions of social media - substantially dictates the approved content, and the status hierarchies.
(And these are sustained and manipulated - for Their own ends - by those with power, naturally.)
This began the process we now see at an advanced and degenerate stage of evolved corruption. Psychologism 'infects' many areas of American discourse; even among those who regard themselves as on The Right or at least against The Left - even among Christians!
For example; the current (weird) 'manosphere' obsessions with the 'socio-sexual hierarchies' (alpha, beta, gamma men, and so forth); or the endless discussion of blue, red, black and white 'pills'... indeed much of the everyday discussion in this general corner of the internet, and among 'trad' Christians of several denominations and churches...
Yet these discourses are derived from that same toxic set of attitudes and concepts that - broadly - evolved from Freudian psychoanalysis.
They are, indeed, instances of Residual Unresolved Positivism - and thus also of Residual Unresolved Leftism - and they work-against Christianity at a structural, metaphysical level.
Serious Christians would, I believe, be well-advised to recognize the malign roots of these ultimately New Left discourses; and to identify, and repent, their own impulse to engage in such thinking and interaction.
