> Freud like all early researchers had no idea what was going on.

I would like to point out that the more you read about this issue, the harder this is to believe.

I hadn't mentioned this, but obviously Freud had a clear financial incentive to enable and hide the sexual abuse that the people who paid for his services committed. And of course, there's the possibility (as some of his patients claim) that he himself also committed those acts, so he may have been protecting himself. (and I don't mean the weird and obviously sexual treatments used, I mean he may have actually raped his patients)

That's one.

Second is that even now there are very atrocious signs about psychiatry, and the other fields of psychiatry, like child services both academic and practice, as both have seen systematic, often legally supported abuse. Just read that link. Some of it, like the abuse in the Soviet Union is in the past.

Most of it is not.

The very basis of child services, the "show me on this anatomically correct doll ..." study was shown to be a fraud. Kids simply point out what they find interesting, and the outcome is random. No correlation to abuse at all. In the study, researchers simply lied about what the kids pointed out. Oops.

How many kids were locked away by child services because they pointed at the wrong part ? There can be no doubt that we're talking tens of thousands minimum.

And of course, https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=2335... . There are no words. The government is unwilling to stop it's use even when fraud was shown. And let's just not mention the question of retracting and fixing of decisions made in the past.

Very similar issues exist for mental services.

On the practice side there is open abuse as well. The main child services decision maker in Norway "used child porn" for 20 years (of course this person has also assigned kids to himself, because of course he did ... note that these children have not been taken away from him after he was found out, nor has he been jailed for what he did. Add to that that the organization he was part of is regularly accused of endemic racism, excessive violence, kidnapping, torture, and worse, causing the deaths of children)

That was 1 year ago. I mean I guess he was doing it for the past 20 years (minimum). But this person got caught 1 year ago. And the system, of course, supported him, after he got caught. How can anyone, at this point, believe that the organization of child services has, in the most generous interpretation, not been infiltrated and is being used to enable and legalize paedophilia, rather than prevent it ? Worst interpretation, of course, is that there never was any other goal. (in Norway, but equally horrifying scandals have occured in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain and Italy. And I'm pretty damn sure that's because I haven't checked many other countries, or just don't speak the language)

The only reason is "provides a useful foundation of the discipline" is that there are many people whose livelihood depends on this being true ... even when we know it's not just a lie, it was at least partly a bunch of criminals hiding their crimes ... And today, it's no different at least somewhat serve to help disgusting abusers and torturers to commit and hide their deeds.

Nor was it different in the past, as we now know plenty of scandals. Nor was it different under other systems. Democracies, dictatorships, communist states, monarchies, ... it doesn't matter, it happened in all of them. Christian, Muslim, atheist, militant atheist states ... and let's just quickly mention what Japan got caught doing : chemical weapons research on mental patients ... whose status as mental patients was established under very dubious circumstances. None have received compensation, or an apology, because of course not.

> you can spend generations looking into something and still be wildly wrong.

Unfortunately that is very clearly not what happened. Criminals and immoral politicians decided what sort of theory would be useful and the result of that is still used today as authoritative.

And even then we're disregarding the fact that even today results in psychology are so often rather thinly veiled frauds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diederik_Stapel

Note how "trustworthy" this person was. Before he was found out, here's his biography:

Stapel obtained an M.A. in psychology and communications from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in 1991.[3] In 1997 he obtained his Ph.D. cum laude in social psychology from the UvA.[3] He became professor at the University of Groningen in 2000[3] and moved to Tilburg University in 2006, where he founded TiBER, the Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research.[3] In September 2010, Stapel became dean of the social and behavioral sciences faculty.[3]

Stapel received the "Career Trajectory Award" from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology in 2009

Unfortunately all of this was the result of about 15 years of constant frauds, a fact complained about by double digit numbers of his students, with zero results.

Needless to say, his book is used by child services and in the Netherlands, and they have not made any retractions, apologies, or changed any of their decisions (which result in incarcerating children) as a result of this.

At what point do we say "this is a total failure" and call these people off ? I guess they're just too useful for corrupt politicians.