Freud's Theories in Everyday Life

When I was about 10 years old, my brother took a psychology class in college, and once he started studying Freud, he started noticing "phallic images" everywhere and hypothesizing about the origin of people's behaviors. I didn't believe the phallic-image obsession then, and I still don't (yes, there are a lot of penis-shaped things in the world. There are a lot of pentagon-shaped and triangle-shaped things in the world too! As far as I'm concerned it's definitely coincidence, not fixation.) So there are definitely topics I disagree with Freud about. In other areas, however, seeing life through the theories of Freud is a fascinating and enlightening activity. Thinking about things through a psychoanalytic framework makes it much easier to be understanding of people; for instance, I have an acquaintance who is highly competitive and enjoys talking about her own accomplishments to an irritating degree; however, since I know that this behavior is a result of pressure from her parents and their lack of praise/affirmation during her childhood, I can understand her search for approval through over-emphasis of her successes. Overall, I can use psychoanalysis to empathize better with the people around me and to be a more patient friend. I don't think I'll ever believe some of Freud's other theories about childhood sexuality (ex. the reason for thumb-sucking), but using the fundamentals of psychoanalysis to note that adult behaviors stem from childhood experiences can make fellow humans' actions much more understandable.