In his book 'Het brein' [The brain] Geerdt Magiels vigorously attacks psychoanalysis. He confronts psychoanalysis with evidence-based psychiatry to prove its lack of therapeutic efficacy and scientific background. Not only does he go about in a rather simplistic way, he also creates a faulty image of what psychoanalysis is and a caricature of what scientific psychiatry might be. In this article some of his faulty statements are corrected. A comparison of the scientific value of both approaches with regard to diagnosis and theoretical models reveals that the differences between them are not as clear cut as Magiels pretends.