I went on a tear at one point trying to really understand, rigorously (I'm a computer and maths person by trade and training), what dialectics are and how, specifically, the material dialectic (the foundation of Marxist thought!) should work.

I was a bit dissapointed to understand that they can't really be "rigorous" in that fashion and that they're really more of a philosophical and rhetorical tool. I do still get a lot of use from them, and in discussions with other people the framework of the dialectic ("Ok, what if we took these two ideas and put them on opposite ends of a spectrum, how does that look?") is very useful for explaining and expounding upon ideas.

The Perverts Guide to Cinema is my favorite scam film.

Yes it's one of my favorites too. Happy to see it again, I haven't seen it in a long time

it's dialectical :)

Definitely

In Marxism, the base (material/economic conditions) is what the superstructure (social/cultural/political conditions) is generated by. Societies organise themselves around the resources available and the division of labour required to utilise them. Marxism's social observations are all rooted in that mediation of the material environment.

It’s not really very evidence-based from what I remember. Freuds ideas rested on a lot of untested assumptions about the way human psychology works

Psychology student hère.

In short, our professor explained to us that there are two approaches as to how subconscious thoughts and emotions work. The first one is that sometimes thought processes are subconscious, but they can be "brought to light" relatively easily; this perspective has been well-validated and compatible with modern psychology. The second approach is the psychoanalytic one - that some thoughts and emotions are forcefully kept away from the consciousness in order to self-regulate. This position has been debunked and doesn't seem to have empirical basis.

That's why classical psychoanalysis today, where you dig deep into thoughts and feelings in order to go beyond the "defensive forces" of the mind (in German also called Abwehr), is seen as outdated.