Neo Freudians

Neo Freudians

Neo-Freudians were therapists who developed their own theories but still retained core Freudian components.

Important neo-Freudians include:-

Alfred Adler 

• Believed that the main driving force in personality is a striving for superiority.

Carl Jung 

• Introduced the concept of the persona (mask) which is the part of the ego presented to other people. The other (more hidden) part of the self is the 'shadow'.
• Differentiated between the personal unconscious (which contains an individual's personal memories) and collective unconscious (a set of memories and ideas that is shared amongst all of humanity).
• Talked of archetypes (symbolic images in the collective unconscious). Important archetypes are anima (female principle), animus (male principle), the shadow, and the self.

Erik Erickson

• Known for his stages of psychosocial development

Harry Stack Sullivan

• Credited with the introduction of interpersonal therapy

Wilfred Bion

• Theories on group dynamics
• Saw each group as having a work group and a basic assumption group
• Three basic assumptions, fight or flight, dependency, and pairing

John Bowlby

• Attachment theory

Anna Freud

• Developed the concept of the defense mechanisms

Otto Kernberg

• Transference Focused Psychotherapy useful for people with borderline personality disorder

Margaret Mahler

• Theories on child development
• Three main phases, autistic phase, symbiotic phase, and separation-individuation phase.

Donald Winnicott

• Introduced the concept of the transitional object and the good enough mother

Posted in: Notes : Behavioural Science and socio-cultural psychiatry