Diffused Freudianism Many of us take the fact that we have read, talked about, and reflected on Freud's writings to be a fairly important thing about us. We who have this as our only contact with psychoanalysis are often abashed in the face of real initiated analysed and analysing Freudians by the idea that our allegiance is just playful, just the half-hearted (head-hearted) manipulation of the terminology for the sake of intellectual fashion, without an appreciation of the depth of the responses that the use of the theory can produce, which give it its real meaning and significance. We are abashed in part by the justice of the accusation. There is a whole direction to Freudianism that we do not see, perhaps do not care to see.

There is also a side to things that we are better placed to see. For good or for bad, a diluted influence of Freud has now permeated our age's conception of mind, of motive, action, and morality, as no psychological theory ever before has. It influences our attitudes to ourselves and others in ways that can be separated from our believing any particular theoretical assertions about causes of behaviour or psychological structure. It shapes the styles of explanation and attribution that we are prepared to understand.