In 1971, when Paul Roazen wrote his article, The Legend of Freud, Freud was still the great prophet of humankind. Nowadays, he is mostly ignored, even not forgotten, his psychoanalytical science no longer considered worth teaching at universities. How the mighty have fallen!
Things were different then when Paul Roazen, who dedicated the better part of his life to researching the history of psychoanalysis, wrote the cringeworthy lines:

Sigmund Freud is unquestionably one of the greatest psychologists of all time, and he has done as much as anyone to revolutionize how we think about ourselves. (1)
Oddly, Roazen didn't seem to see the irony of his statement. There's no doubt that Freud was insane, which he was aware of. He revealed his lunacy in his letters to Fliess. (2)
And if a madman is one of the greatest psychologists of all time, we are in deep trouble.
Sadly, the ideas of a madman shaped the way we think about ourselves, in the first place in America. And the results are apparent.
Everyone who wants to understand the seismic changes in our society during the last century and the current one needs to be aware of Freud's influence on our perception, not only of ourselves as a person but also of society as a whole.
As Roazen explained:
His ideas have permeated our thinking in so many obvious and subtle ways that to acknowledge his importance hardly requires a declaration of faith or commitment of soul. (1)
One thing is certain. We no longer realise that, and to what extent, the plague Freud brought to America in 1909 is still alive, and well, even thriving, over time having become part of who we are. Unfortunately,
His impact on the United States in particular has been enormous; no one would deny his influence, if only because the general public has for the last few decades been raising its children according to Dr. Spock’s manuals. (1)
Just think about it for a moment. So, Dr. Spock based his child-rearing manuals on a madman's mad ideas!

It is enough to read Freud's psychopathological book where he described his sadistic abuse of one of his sons to realise that Freud's ideas of child-rearing should be shunned like pest and cholera. No wonder, all of Freud's children turned out to be mental cases, his youngest daughter, Anna, leading the pack.

 And, the gullible mothers followed Dr. Spock's manuals, treating them as a baby-rearing bible.  No wonder the American society, but not only, following Freud's lead, and having forgotten its Christian compass, looks the way it does.
As Roazen further pointed out, a scary thought,
the acceptance of ... his system of thought has come to be so widespread as to be almost anonymous. (1)
In other words, we don't even realise that, and to what extent, our thinking had been poisoned by Freud's deranged ideas. 

Absurdly, Roazen claimed that Freud, discovered for science the meaningfulness of dream life. (1) But Freud did nothing of the sort, instead he used fake dreams, concocted in a cocaine-induced haze, (2) intended to propagate his perversions and criminality. (3)
There's no denying that some of his notions, most of them not his own, have a basis in human behaviour. But they were known to people long before Freud, even though they weren't always formalised. On the other hand, Freud's ideas, based on his lunacy, do not apply to the rest of humanity. It is enough to mention the bizarre notion of infantile sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and penis envy as obvious examples of Freudian madness.
As anyone realises, but not his followers, Infants do not have sex with one another but rather play in a sandbox, with cars or dolls. And most certainly, unlike Freud, they don't murder their fathers to have sex with their mother. It's enough to check out the infrequency of parricide to realise the degree of Freudian madness.

But Roazen was right to point out that Freud, unfortunately, is still quite a figure in intellectual history. (1) He's not the only madman that became famous. In many contexts, it is madmen who rule our world. It suffices to name, Adolf Hitler, another Viennese, as a scary example.

Unfortunately, the Freudian plague spread quickly. As always, it's about money. As Roazen pointed out, In America up until recently - in the 1970s - psychoanalysts have been at the top of the psychiatric profession, charging the highest fees. (1) If the Americans wouldn't come to Vienna, the Freudians would, instead, invade America and loot America's coffers brimming with gold.
In their old country, as Roazen pointed out, Freud's followers were outcasts with uncertain income, no academic position, and no social prestige. Most of them had serious mental problems, that's why in the first place they joined Freud's psychoanalytical religion. (4)

But in America, and the bulk of psychoanalysts are now here, their profession automatically places them, financially and socially, in the upper middle class. (5)

Twenty years later, Torrey Fuller E., in his Freudian Freud revealed The Malignant Effect of Freud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, (1992).
As he pointed out, Freud's theory has seeped into almost all aspects of life in America, affecting everything from literature, drama, and pop culture to child-rearing and our criminal justice system.

And he made it clear that,
The perpetuation of the Freudian paradigm is a kind of fraud.

Notably, Freud's, theory gained initial recognition in the beginning of the [last] century as part of the sexual revolution, then became attached to ... nurture in the nature-nurture debate, and finally evolved into a symbol of liberalism and humanism in the post-World War II period, inextricably linked to American liberal politics and the Democratic Party.

This doesn't seem to sound good to me. A madman's ideas, part of the ideological debate in American politics?

As, mirroring Roazen, Fuller explained:
The Freudian paradigm is so intertwined with liberalism and humanism in America that to doubt the former is to implicitly denigrate the latter.
This kind of attitude, not for the first time, precludes any objective discussion of the merits of Freud's pseudo-science and its bizarre claims. No wonder, Freud is still being embraced by some sections of the establishment, in the first place, by the humanistic academia.  
How did it all start? In 1909 Freud was invited by the Clark University to lecture about his revolutionary ideas.

Unsurprisingly, Freud's ideas weren't appreciated by all. The New York Times referred to Freud as the “Viennese libertine” ... and ... his teachings were “a direct invitation to masturbation, perversion, illegitimate births, |and| unions out of wedlock.” (6)
The journalists were right on the money. Freud was the Viennese libertine, a life-long masturbator, engaging in perversions, and preaching unions out of wedlock.
Freud didn't think his lectures would be well-received. In his letter of 1909, he wrote, I also think that once they [the American professionals] discover the sexual core of our psychological theories they will drop us. (7) He was wrong, the Americans taking to Freud's sexual (and other deranged) ideas like the proverbial ducks to the water, and still swimming in it, turning Freud into the leader of an all-American sexual revolution. Most certainly, by those in charge, Freud was hailed as the prophet of sexual freedom, (8)
And, New York City became - and remains - the mecca for Freud's theory in America, (9) which may explain its democratic leanings.

There were also attempts to marry Freud and Marx, although, Freud didn't have this kind of political ambition. Nevertheless, the arranged gay marriage of the two famous men, to this day has remained in place, and there's no divorce in sight.

Without a doubt, for most of the 20th century, Freud's ideas and treatments, not that they worked, had a large influence on the state of mental health in American society.
Freudian thought was taught at, and spread by, the universities, and most, if not all, psychology teachers were devoted Freudians. Also, the publishing and film industries were, and still are, imbued with Freudian explanations of human behaviour.
Most significantly, our justice system had been to a large extent hijacked by Freudian ideas, sympathising with the perpetrator (a victim of his childhood) rather than with the victim of the former's crime.

The American fascination with Freud's bizarre ideas persists, pervading every aspect of American life. One cannot understand why American society looks the way it does without considering the damaging ole Freud's ideas played in shaping it.

Is  Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic edifice relevant to the 21st century? This is the title of a 2007 article by Adolf - not that Adolf - Grünbaum who noted that,
Psychoanalytic theory and therapy are indeed increasingly in crisis, not only in the United States ... as reported in 2003 in Time magazine, there are now only 5,000 such patients, amounting to just two per practicing member of the APA  .... That number is declining while the mean age of the analysts is 62 and increasing.

You can fool some people all the time, but not all people. Lots of people have seen the light, and they didn't like what it revealed.

For well over a century, the bulk of the psychoanalytic community has complacently squandered ... its erstwhile near monopoly: No genuine effort was made to procure the required cogent evidence for the credibility of Freud’s causal inferences and explanations ... (10)

 Evidence of what?  That every son wants to murder his father?  That women are castrated men? That we dream of murdering anyone and everyone? Grünbaum must have been joking, or hallucinating, or both.
Judging by Grünbaum's account, psychoanalysis, by now, should be dead and buried. But it is only an illusion. It is like a virus - even though not killing its host - that cannot be removed from one's body,
It is continuing its parasitic existence in our minds, shaping the way we think and act, even worse, the way how our societies are organised and functioning; not always in a way that is beneficial for its members.
(1) Roazen, Paul, The Legend of Freud, The Virginia Quarterly Review Vol. 47, No. 1 (WINTER 1971), pp. 33-45, (1971, p. 33). https://www.jstor.org/stable/26443193?seq=6, 15.12.2024.
(2) Freud, Sigmund, The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887–1904, (1985).

(3) Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, (1913).
(4) Wittels, Fritz, Sigmund Freud: His personality, his Teaching, and his School, (1924).
(5) Roazen, (1971, p. 34).

(6) Torrey Fuller E., Freudian Freud: The Malignant Effect of Freud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture, (1992, p. 15)
(7) Torrey, (1992, p. 16).
(8) Torrey, (1992, p. 14).

(9) Torrey, (1992, p. 22.

(10) Grünbaum, Adolf, Is Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic edifice relevant to the 21st century? Psychoanalytic Psychology, The American Psychological Association 2006, Vol. 23, No. 2, 257–284.