ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis is talked about to a greater extent than one realizes, in the press and by the general cultivated public, as well as by the psychological and psychiatric one. Formed outside psychoanalytic experience, its representation is rich in ill-founded opinions that it would be tedious to apportion among prejudices, misunderstandings, and other varieties of error. Misinformed, sometimes contradictory criticism accuses it, by turns, of the rigidity or fantasy of its technique, of the rashness or systematization of its interpretations; there is belief in the efficacy of 'bringing to awareness', but also in the inefficacy of treatment; it is believed that it destroys a person's equilibrium and creative originality; and it is stigmatized for its demoralizing action or its moral indifference. In its most inexperienced and unsubstantiated form, the criticism of artificiality exists vaguely in the minds of a general public that happily sets psychoanalysis against 'spontaneous' forms of conversation and confidence or more ritualized forms of confession and counselling.
