Watch out for literary critics. They can get feisty.
You have heard about how hard Freud had to fight to get his theory recognized as a theory. Before there could be debates, there were dismissals. And more dismissals.
These lasted for a long time. They can even be heard to echo when hard-line Marxist critics or old-school proponents of the New Criticism (there are a few of them still around, in tweed jackets with elbow patches, of course) characterize psychoanalytic reading as, in effect, piles of poo.
But to cast psychoanalysis aside entirely is to ignore all of the rich and strange conversations that have happened, and are still happening, within psychoanalytic theory. First there was the falling-out between Freud and Jung, shown in A Dangerous Method.
More recently there have been quarrels between Lacan and his followers, on the one hand, and those labeled "ego psychologists," on the other. Slap the word "ego" in front of anything, and you know it's serious.
Freud vs. Jung
Freud and Jung were once super tight. Jung was one of Freud's most promising and once-beloved disciples. But Freud thought this dude's interest in the "collective unconscious" would invite more skepticism and scorn. And frankly, Freud was sick of not being taken seriously.
Jung was into occult phenomena and religious symbolism. And those interests, as we've said, were thought to be either very silly or very dangerous in their day. So Freud didn't want his buddy Jung to undermine what little credibility psychoanalysis had gained as a science.
Like a cold-hearted psycho(analyst), he left Jung by the side of the (theoretical) road.
Jung's theories have gained a lot of popularity over time, though. And not just among tarot card readers and other occultists. He's kind of a hero to many writers of popular psychology/self-help books.
However, his stuff tends to be ignored by literary theorists who draw on psychoanalysis to advance their arguments. Freud won this round, it would seem.
Freud and Lacan vs. the "Ego Psychologists"
Hey, remember that time Lacan gave a bunch of snazzy seminars in postwar Paris? Well, that initiated what Dr. L himself called a "return to Freud." Obviously, the two were pretty into each other, then.
Lacan wanted to reestablish the radical nature of Freud's writings, and especially to rescue these writings from the American tradition of "ego psychology." Inspired by Anna Freud, these ego psychologists, as Lacan disdainfully called them, wanted to strengthen the ego. Not teach us how to hold our deep-seated desires lightly.
As a result, these "ego psychologists" viewed psychoanalysis as counter-productive. They thought it was just a tool for helping people to adapt to societal norms. (FYI, mental health activists still make this argument today; not everyone believes they should go to therapy in order to learn how to live more peacefully and felicitously within the dominant paradigm.)
But Lacan wasn't having any of that. He thought that there was more to be learned from analysis than the knowledge of how to fit in. Adaptation to prevailing societal standards—"normalization"—was never what Freud wanted out of psychoanalysis, Lacan argued.
And Dr. L wanted to be true to Freud's teaching. He advocated for helping patients and students to face the truths of their desires, however frightening those truths may be.
Some of Lacan's most prominent readers, during and after the revolutionary events of 1968, drew on his theories in the critique of ideology. The work of the committed Lacanian Slavoj Zizek, for example, attests to the ongoing relationship between psychoanalytic theory and radical politics.
If Lacan is truly Freud's true heir, then we can only conclude that Freud won this round as well… through his French surrogate. Way to reach through the ages and sculpt history, Dr. Freud.