For the average mental disorder, it is equally as effective to be treated with psychoanalysis compared with any other psychological treatment [1], although it i

For the average mental disorder, it is equally as effective to be treated with psychoanalysis compared with any other psychological treatment [1], although it is notoriously one of the longer and most expensive forms of therapy. So, your hypothesis c is likely correct. However, I disagree that it is not harmful. For some conditions, you would find an effect for homeopathy simply because of the placebo effect. What we see with psychological treatments is very similar, but to straight out call them pseudoscience ruffles a lot of feathers. Psychoanalysis and other sorts of garbage take space in university, they get a lot of attention in media/culture, and in the end they are not delivering much at all. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22227111/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22227111/