Answer

Of course I’m not an expert, and it’s hard to rely on what I say. Questions like this always strike me as odd, because suppose I tell you that I don’t trust it. Why should you believe me rather than the many psychologists who say otherwise? In what way am I preferable to them?
But if you’re asking nonetheless, I won’t refrain from stating my opinion. My impression is that psychoanalysis—by the way, there are several kinds, and that itself strongly confirms what I’m saying—is nothing more than a collection of foolish fantasies with no basis whatsoever. By the way, there is a connection between your two questions: if it were true, then presumably treatment by these methods ought to be effective. My impression is that even in the cases—very rare, in my estimation—where psychological treatment really does help in some way (beyond placebo, of course, whose effect is very hard to neutralize in psychological research), it seems to me that this is not because of any orderly psychological knowledge or any reliable picture of the psyche, but because of the therapist’s good intuitions (though of course the knowledge may perhaps help him formulate them). There is no real discipline here, nor disciplinary knowledge that can be used systematically. And the fact is that the number of methods is equal to the number of therapists and patients, and all of them claim success (and I doubt that too). By the way, I’ll note that I have agreement on this matter—from several experienced psychologists I’ve spoken with about it (the ones who are close enough friends of mine to speak honestly and give up the games and professional prestige).
In psychiatry it’s a bit different, of course, but even there the mental component is very elusive and highly influential, so that too is not exactly a normal body of scientific knowledge.
Although I’ve already written several times that Freud’s psychoanalysis is a work of genius, even if there is nothing substantial in it. He invented, out of whole cloth, an entire language in which one can formulate hypotheses in psychology and discuss them more systematically. Even if that language is bizarre and invented, it at least makes more systematic discourse and hypothesis-testing possible.