The therapeutic couch has always been a bit crowded. Your mother, your father, your secret demons. And, whether you like it or not, whether you acknowledge it or not, Sigmund Freud is there too.
His theories, more than a century old, have been criticized as sexist, authoritarian, elitist, and just plain wrong. Yet Freud's insights still affect the way many people think about the self, the unconscious, dreams, sexuality, and freudian slips. Freud's concept of transference means the therapist can morph into mother or father on the way to recovery.
There was a time when psychoanalysis took years. Today the "talking cure" is truncated both by managed care and Prozac. Still Freud retains his complex hold on our psyches.
