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In these discussions Wittgenstein was critical of Freud. But he was also bringing out how much there is in what Freud says about the notion of “dream symbolism,” for instance, or the suggestion that in dreaming I am— in some sense— ‘saying something.’ He was trying to separate what is valuable in Freud from that ‘way of thinking’ which he wanted to combat.
He told me that when he was in Cambridge before 1914 he had thought psychology a waste of time. (Although he had not ignored it. I heard him explain the Weber-Fechner law to a student in a way that cannot have come simply from reading Meinong's article or from discussions with Russell.) “Then some years later I happened to read something by Freud, and I sat up in surprise. Here was someone who had something to say.” I think this was soon after 1919. And for the rest of his life Freud was one of the few authors he thought worth reading. He would speak of himself— at the period of these discussions— as “a disciple of Freud” and “a follower of Freud.”
He admired Freud for the observations and suggestions in his writings; for “having something to say” even where, in Wittgenstein's view, he was wrong. On the other hand, he thought the enormous influence of psychoanalysis in Europe and America was harmful— “although it will take a long time before we lose our subservience