Not everything can be verified. However a self proposed science that isn't verified is just philosophy. Hence, my four elements from Aristotle.
What Freudian psychoanalysis has is a semblance of science. It reminds me of quacks selling quantum energies to cure your back problems. Only instead of quantum its Phlogiston.
> Heck, it's itself unprovable and can't be verified
An unprovable science is just philosophizing.
As for verification can't itself be verified. Purely theoretically - yes. However. Purely theoretically you could use a rock enchanted by your local witch doctor to send me this message.
Are you using such device (not based on science, and verification but magical powers) to communicate?
My point is, verification is based on things working in the real world, which psychoanalysis for the most part doesn't.
No, but that's probably a coincidence more than anything else. Other cultures have used such methods, and were satisfied by them!
We might say "sure, but they were ignorant, those methods didn't work", etc. -- but if they had no qualms about them at the time, our objection is somewhat moot...
Yes. Which is not the same as a caricature of Freudian analysis.
>Freud theory is bunk. It's unprovable, can't be verified
Not everything has to be verified. This tendency of Anglosaxons/Analyticals to want to "verify" everything is bunk. Heck, it's itself unprovable and can't be verified (you can't verify the need for verification -- in the end you always get to some unverified tenets you need to begin, e.g. utilitarianism).
>To quote a poet "Brevity is the soul of wit".
To quote another poet: "I have heard many people say, "Give me the ideas, it is no matter what words you put them into.... Ideas cannot be given but in their minutely appropriate words".