Neo Freudians

Common themes of Neo-Freudians

1. Move away from sex and aggression, toward interpersonal factors
2. Place less emphasis on unconscious
3. Place less emphasis on childhood experiences, more emphasis on daily life vicissitudes

Alfred Adler

Grew up in Vienna
● Difficult early childhood, almost died, lost brother
● Friendly guy, saw lots of lower and middle class clients, advocated women’s rights
● Met Freud in 1902, broke up with him in 1911 over theoretical differences
● Moved to America late in life

Less focused on sex and aggression, more focused on society and community
● More optimistic
● People have agency in who they become
● Inner life of women same as inner life as men

Alfred Adler Theory

We all feel inferior in some way during childhood
● As we grow, we make up for this inferiority in one of two ways:
○ Striving for success
■ Healthy
■ Success for all humanity
■ Care for others, social progress
○ Striving for superiority
■ Unhealthy
■ Superior to others
■ Associated with inferiority complex

Social Interest

Feeling of oneness with all humankind
○ Empathy, cooperation, glue that binds society together
○ German: Gemeinschaftsgefühl
● For Adler, social interest is the only gauge useful in judging the worth of a person
○ Social interest makes or breaks a person

Carl Jung

Born in Switzerland, gifted student, became a psychiatrist
● Became penpals with Freud in 1906, met the next year
○ Bonded immediately, talked for 13 hours straight
● Freud appointed Jung the successor of his theory, called Jung his “crown prince”
● Went to America together in 1909, tensions started to simmer
● By 1913, they had huge falling out, wedding cancelled
○ Jung admitted to feelings for Freud with an “undeniable erotic undertone”
● Jung went into period of depression for four years
● Came out of this period with his own theory

Jung was more interested in spiritual/mystical/occult
○ Very interested in symbols
● Placed more emphasis than Freud on the second half of life (35+)

Carl Jung: Theory

Jung emphasized the collective unconscious
○ A collection of images, symbols, ideas, fears,
attachments inherited from all the collective
experience of our ancestors
■ E.g., snakes

Images from collective unconscious called
archetypes
● Archetypes appear in stories we tell
○ E.g., hero, sage

To reach full potential:
○ Overcome fear of unconscious
○ Integrate opposites
○ Prevent persona from dominating
○ Embrace shadow
○ Embrace anima/animus

Persona

Mask we wear to show to others

Shadow

The dark side of our personality, repressed feelings and unacceptable drives

Anima

The feminine side (in men)

Animus

The masculine side (in women)

Karen Horney

Born outside of Hamburg, Germany
● Grew up feeling unloved and neglected by her family
● Moved to the US in the 1930s, developed her theory from that point
● 365 party girl

Karen Horney: Disagreements with Freud

● Placed a lot more emphasis on society and
culture
● More optimistic, felt we had more agency
● Rejected penis envy, all of Freud’s views
about women
○ Horney: If women desire to be like men, it’s because of society, not their bodies
○ Horney: If women have penis envy, men
must have womb envy

Karen Horney: Theory

● Child grows up without warm, loving environment -> develops basic hostility
● Basic hostility repressed, comes back as basic anxiety
○ Fear of being alone and helpless in a hostile world
● To cope with anxiety, person develops neurotic needs
○ Unhealthy, unrealistic ways of relating to people

Moving Toward People

In unhealthy ways, desperately strive for affection, seek powerful partner

Moving Against People

Ruthless, uncaring, exploit others, feel superior

Moving Away from People

Detached, independent, refuse to let anyone in, don’t want to need people. 

Erik Erikson

Born in southern Germany in 1902
● Never knew his biological father
● Late adolescence: wandered Europe for
7 years, traveling artist and poet
● Went through identity crisis, tried many
jobs, lived in many places, jack of all
trades
● Moved to US in 1933, changed last name
to Erikson, did ethnographic studies

Erik Erikson: Disagreements with Freud

● Placed more emphasis on culture, social
and historical influences
● Revised Freud’s psychosexual stages
○ Extended into adulthood and old age
● Placed less emphasis on unconscious

Erik Erikson: Theory

Life cycle approach to personality
● Each stage: identity crisis where we face a challenge/conflict
● If you resolve: Gain a strength/virtue for the next stage
● If not: Go on anyway, a bit less prepared

Less focus on erogenous zones as explanations for each stage
● Influential in developmental psychology, contributed many ideas

Melanie Klein

● Born in Vienna, felt rejected by her parents
● Multiple family members died while she was growing up
● Had difficulty with early relationships, was unhappily married
● By 1914, rose her children with psychoanalytic principles
● Separated from her husband, started a private practice in Berlin
○ Worked with young children, pioneered strategies in child therapy
● Moved to England in 1927
● Considered herself a Freudian, but Freud never accepted her </3

Melanie Klein: Disagreements with Freud

● Stressed role of mother: intimacy, nurturing
● Saw human contact and relatedness
(not sex) as the prime motive
● Stressed importance of first few months of life
○ Infant’s drives form template for future relationships

Melanie Klein: Theory

● Pioneered object relations theory
○ Psychoanalytic study of interpersonal relations
● Emotionally important people are called objects
● We relate to people based on the image we hold of them in our mind
○ Images do not always match reality
○ Starts in infancy with caregiver
● Influenced attachment theory
○ Developed by John Bowlby and later Mary Ainsworth

Where did all the Neo-Freudians go?

Psychoanalytic research became increasingly less
popular from the 1950s on
○ Rise of behaviorism, other theories
○ Easier to do one-off experiments than craft
elaborate theories

Lots of research engages with psychoanalytic theory
○ Anything unconscious
○ Conflicting mental processes
○ Sexual or aggressive wishes as they influence thought, feeling, and behavior
○ Self-defensive thought and self-deception
○ Childhood patterns that endure into adulthood