After thinking about this a bit, it might be better to phrase the question thusly:
Which is more outlandish and fantastical in their beliefs: Scientology or mainstream psychoanalysis?

You are of course familiar with the ideas of the Oedipus Complex, the Castration Complex, the id, ego and super ego, penis envy, that vaginal orgasm, the death instinct, the primal scene and primal crime, transference, and the Freudian defense mechanisms. Here is the diagnosis, from the founder of psychoanalysis himself, of a patient's recurring dream about dogs sitting in a tree outside his window:

"The wolves (actually dogs, as Freud was later compelled to admit), were the parents; their whiteness meant bedclothes; their stillness meant the opposite, coital motion; their big tails signified, by the same indulgent logic, castration; daylight meant night; and all this could be traced most assuredly to a memory from age one of (the patient's) mother and father copulating, doggy style, no less than three times in succession while he watched from the crib and soiled himself in horrified protest." -- Frederick Crews, Follies of the Wise

That's a pretty fantastic stretch, no? We certainly cannot attribute this particular reading of Freud's to the entire 20th century psychoanalysis community. However, just this sort of interpretation remains common today in the (albeit fading) world of professional psychoanalysis and its supporting academics -- who also continue to embrace the central concepts listed above based largely on the "evidence" based on analysands with such diagnoses.

One could say that Freudian concepts are less fantastic than Rapture type beliefs simply because they presume to be entirely natural, but the same thing could be said of scientology. In addition, Freud and to a great extent psychoanalysm of today claim that many of their spectacular claims are beyond the "positivism" of scientific measure.


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