Freud and the neo-Freudians AND Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Theorists Today

The neo-Freudians were pioneering psychologists who rallied around Freud and his ideas. They accepted Freud’s basic ideas: the id, ego, and superego; the importance of the unconscious; childhood personality shaping; defense mechanisms

The neo-Freudians were different from Freud in two distinct ways. They placed more emphasis on the conscious mind’s role in interpreting experiences and coping with the environment. They doubted sex and aggression were all-consuming motivations. Instead, they tended to emphasize loftier motives and social interactions.

For example… Alfred Adler and Karen Horney (two prominent neo-Freudians) agreed that the childhood is important. But, believed children moved through social, not sexual tensions. Adler believed children feel inferior. These feelings of inferiority trigger our strive for superiority and power in adulthood.

Horney believed children feel anxious because they feel helpless Horney believed children feel anxious because they feel helpless. Anxiety in adulthood triggers our need for love and security. Horney also countered Freud’s idea of “penis envy” and weak female superegos as male bias.

Carl Jung placed less emphasis on social factors and agreed with Freud that the unconscious has a powerful influence over the mind. Jung believed the unconscious contained not only repressed thoughts and feelings, but also a “collective unconscious”. The “collective unconscious” is a collection of shared, inherited memory traces from human history.

For example, mothers being a symbol for nurturing across many cultures. Many of today’s psychologists don’t believe in the idea of shared experiences, but think our shared evolutionary history shaped some universal dispositions.

Psychodynamic theory and therapy have evolved considerably since then. “Freud, like Elvis, has been dead for a number of years but continues to be cited with some regularity.” – Drew Weston Many aspects of Freudian theory are indeed out of date, and they should be: Freud died in 1939. Psychodynamic theory and therapy have evolved considerably since then.

Most contemporary psychoanalysts and psychodynamic theorists… No longer write about ids, egos, or superegos; view psychotherapy as a search for lost memories or think sex is the basis of personality. However, they do embrace the following four core postulates, which in a large measure reflect Freud’s enduring contributions to the understanding of human personality.

1. The most central proposition is that much of mental life – thoughts, feelings, and motives – is unconscious. This means that people show behavior patterns and develop symptoms that are inexplicable to themselves.

2. Mental processes, Including affective and motivational processes, operate in parallel, so that individuals can have conflicting feelings toward the same person or situation. These conflicting feelings motivate individuals to act in opposing ways and often lead to compromise solutions.

3. Stable personality patterns Start to form in early childhood, and people’s early experiences play a significant role in personality development, especially in ways they form later social relationships.

4. Personality development Involves more than learning to regulate sexual and aggressive impulses. It requires moving from immature, social dependence to mature independence.