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Freud trained as a medical doctor, and as such, he believed his research methods and conclusions were scientific. However, his research and practice were condemned by many of his peers, as well as later psychologists and academics. Some, like Juliet Mitchell or, have suggested that this is because his basic claim, that many of our conscious thoughts and actions are motivated by unconscious fears and desires, implicitly challenges universal and objective claims about the world (some proponents of science conclude that this invalidates Freudian theory as a means of interpreting and explaining human behavior. Psychoanalysis today maintains the same ambivalent relationship with medicine and academia that Freud experienced during his life.
Current psychotherapists, who seek to treat mental illness, relate to Freudian psychoanalysis in different ways. Some psychotherapists have modified this approach and have developed a variety of "psychodynamic" models and therapies. Other therapists reject Freud's model of the mind, but have adapted elements of his therapeutic method, especially his reliance on patients' talking as a form of therapy. Experimental psychologists generally reject Freud's methods and theories. Psychiatrists train as medical doctors, but—like most medical doctors in Freud's time—most reject his theory of the mind, and generally rely more on psychoactive drugs than talk in their treatments.
Freud's psychological theories are hotly disputed today and many leading academic and research psychiatrists regard him as a charlatan, but there are also many leading academic and research psychiatrists who agree with the core of his work. Psychiatric disorders are often considered purely diseases of the brain, the etiology of which is principally genetic. This view emphasizes constitutional factors in mental illness. Freud believed that the vast majority of disorders result from a combination of constitutional and environmental factors, the relative importance of each varying from one person to another.
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