4 ms·

I think that you are correct, but that the big fall-off happened between 1980 and 1990.

• bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I agree that there was a big fall-off about that time, basically I attribute it to - Freud died in 1939, all the big writers that were into his ideas as the perfect key to "character" were no longer as important in the 80s, and so as often happen with intellectual ideas that do not have any proof behind them they began to get sort of tarnished. I choose 2000 however as the point where the ideas become sort of ludicrous, there were still plenty of people who had been brought up believing these ideas were facts in the 80s alive and in positions of power, by 2000 they have begun to retire and die off and in various ways not exert any great intellectual power. In 1980 if your boy child wet the bed you might still end up having someone tell you seriously it's because he is entering in the phallic phase of personality development, in 2000 maybe one of your crazy old relatives at Thanksgiving will try that. Some of Freud's ideas still seem to hold sway however, for example the general point of the Oedipus Complex idea which I think has stayed a bit more because of having made a firmer place for itself in literary criticism. Of course the problem with theories that explain the world is they never really die out, hence flat-earthers and hence this article.