What is the relationship between psychoanalysis and mainstream academic psychology?
Psychoanalysis was developing at a fast pace and academic psychology had closed its doors for psychoanalysis. Many psychologists criticized the importance of sex, neurosis, and dreams in the study of psychoanalysis. Franklin said that psychoanalysis was a result of an underdeveloped mind.
Many called it voodoism, and uncanny religion which had developed to hoodwink the masses. Despite all the harsh criticism, Freud’s psychology made its way in the psychology textbook of American Universities. By the mid 1900s, psychoanalysis had caught the public attention and the academic psychologists were keen to eradicate it from the public’s mind.
They conducted various experiments to defy the logic behind psychoanalytic studies. They carried out experiments and tests. They concluded that academic psychology was the primary psychology, and that Freud’s psychology was still an inferior one. Although the tests conducted had some gaping holes, yet they did not defer from calling psychoanalysis a waste science.
Eventually, with time, Freud’s psychology made its way into the mainstream psychology. The role of childhood experiences in developing the unconscious mind had been substantiated.