During my vacation in Lebanon, I wrote a small essay about the need to 'modernize' psychology. I found out later that a much better essay was written on the topic:
A New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry, By Eric R. Kandel (PDF)

Here's my essay anyway:

A Wake Up Call to Modern Psychologists
Since the 1950’s, endless debates have been opposing partisans of Freudian psychology and those of neuroscience. Brain scientists accused Freud of lacking in scientific rigor. "His principal method of investigation was not controlled experimentation but simple observations of patients in clinical settings, interwoven with theoretical inferences."

I agree that Freud did not proceed scientifically, but bear in mind that he did not have the means to do so. In the 1900’s, electromagnetic brain-mapping devices simply didn’t exist. The only tool you had to unravel the secrets of the human mind was your own mind, and that’s what Freud used. So we can’t blame him. However, we can blame many of today’s psychologists.

These folks actually have all the modern devices that Freud wished he had. They are the ones who are supposed to examine the human brain more closely than anybody else, but they refuse to do so, bluntly barricading their thinking around Freud’s theories and metaphorical terms. Why? Because they don’t like the idea that all the complexity of human thought has its roots in the biological mechanisms of the brain. In short they are saying: "The brain is not a machine! Humans are not robots!

Ironically, Freud himself frequently made remarks such as "the deficiencies in our description would presumably vanish if we were already in a position to replace the psychological terms by physiological and chemical ones". He enthusiastically anticipated the day when "id energies" would be controlled directly by "particular chemical substances". He knew that human thoughts emerge from brains, and that the brain is a physical object just like any other.

Why could everything on earth be explained in physical and chemical terms except the human mind? It doesn’t make sense. "So we are robots?" you might ask, worriedly. Not in the sense of "Hollywood-movie" robots. The term robot and machine are surrounded by so many clichés that it’s unwise to use them in the context of neuroscience. The human mind is complex system that grew more complex as the human species evolved. All our thoughts, feelings and desires are in fact the result of chemical reactions happening in the brain. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence supporting this theory. It’s called Neuroscience. It’s called Evolutionary Psychology.

So does neuroscience and evolutionary psychology invalidate Freudian psychology? Not at all. Actually, quite the opposite, they complement it. Neuroscientists are finding that their biological descriptions of the brain may fit together best when integrated by Freud’s psychological framework. (See "Scientific American", issue of May 2004)

So here’s my message to modern psychologists: Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology are your allies, if you don’t want to be left behind, embrace the knowledge that they have to offer!