Neo-Freudians

The term "Neo-Freudian" is routinely used in subtly different ways by those intimately familiar with the minutia of psychoanalysis (often used to group together one specific academic lineage) than by general commenters on the history of psychology (who use the term broadly to describe any dissenting heirs to Freud's work). When speaking in the broad sense, a "Neo-Freudian" is any theorist or psychoanalyst whose initial education or work was grounded in Sigmund Freud's theory, but which later made a conspicuous departure from the Freudian model, most commonly in the form of resisting the purported role of infant psychosexuality or in expanding the role of social and cultural factors in the formation of personality. By this definition, many of the most famous Neo-Freudians were students and contemporaries of Freud, who departed his company on grounds of theoretical dissent, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Jung. When speaking in the narrow sense, the "Neo-Freudians" were a tradition of mostly American psychiatrists and psychologists in mid-twentieth century, many of whom based their work in some aspects of Freud's original theories, but continued in Adler's direction of variously expanding, updating, or replacing biologically innate elements of Freud's theories with social or cultural influences. By this definition, theorists such as Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan are some of the quintessential Neo-Freudians.