Psychology has made him into a 'god'. I believe Freud had his own issues which needed to be solved; woman have penile envy and boys want to have sex with their mother?!?
Thoughts are mixed. I don't think of him as either a Genius or a Lunatic. I do think of him as a bit of a One Trick Pony. I agree with Pristinegirl that he had his own issues that kept his focus quite narrow.
I certainly think he opened important avenues of thought and discovery, but he seems to have put all of his psychological eggs into that one basket.
I think he had a creative mind, and his contributions have been very valuable. We've learned since then that there is more to human psychology (whew!) - which I guess makes sense. His ideas were only a puzzle of the knowledge.
His ideas seemed obsessive - and if I remember correctly, I really didn't appreciate how he was said to interact with some of his patients. I agree with IndigoSensor on this one, I feel I wouldn't have liked him as a person. Poor people, if they believed him.
he was definitely a pioneer of sorts...and I think part of the reason for his total obsession with sex in his theories was the Victorian-era repression against sexuality. Maybe he didn't intentionally want to shock people, but the effect was to make people at least question what it is that makes us sexual. He was the first person to really think that kids were sexual -- an idea that is still ignored today (or which continues to be coated with morality).
Also, his ideas may not have lasted the test of time, but he gave birth to psychoanalysis and a host of other individuals who have really contributed exceptional theories -- people like Carl Jung, William Reich (who's books have been burned by the U.S gov't), Karen Bowlby and Anna Freud (his daughter). All of those people relied on Freud's theories as their foundation...by all accounts he was an excellent father to Anna, which is always nice to read
I always take Freud's theories with a generous grain of salt. And, really, so do many of the modern-day psychologists. However, he really is one of the founders of psychology today, and definitely paved the way for other "talk therapies" (such as Carl Rogers' "Person Centred Therapy")
His ideas are sort of old but some of them are fundamental. Some are right, some are wrong.
His stages of Sexuality are not applicable for everyone, I don't think, because he believed homosexuality was the result of something going wrong with parent relationship.
Though I do like to learn more about how he sorted through people. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are just as interesting as him but will never be published until they are dead =P
He has interesting theories however the psychodynamic perspective is in general very week as it is hard to test and verify scientifically.
Many of the vague concepts, such as the Unconscious and inner conflicts, can be used to explain anything but nevertheless predict very litte.
However I acknowledge that it has fundamental ideas significant to psychology of today.
Freud is a joke. He basically made up stuff without backing it up with anything other than his opinion and intuition. Some of it was right, but most of it wasn't. I'm not saying he's a complete worthless person to study, but he's not someone to study for "up-to-date" psych. research.
He's kinda like one of those old relic philosophers, like Descartes. Some of Descartes is OK, but his ideas certainly had some visible flaws in them. Like the soul having a physical place in the body, for example.