Psychoanalytic Schools

Various psychoanalytic schools have adopted other names for their doctrines to indicate deviations from Freudian theory.

Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung, one of the earliest pupils of Freud, eventually created a school that he preferred to call analytical psychology. Like Freud, Jung used the concept of the libido; however, to him it meant not only sexual drives, but a composite of all creative instincts and impulses and the entire motivating force of human conduct. According to his theories, the unconscious is composed of two parts; the personal unconscious, which contains the results of the individual’s entire experience, and the collective unconscious, the reservoir of the experience of the human race. In the collective unconscious exist a number of primordial images, or archetypes, common to all individuals of a given country or historical era. Archetypes take the form of bits of intuitive knowledge or apprehension and normally exist only in the collective unconscious of the individual. When the conscious mind contains no images, however, as in sleep, or when the consciousness is caught off guard, the archetypes commence to function. Archetypes are primitive modes of thought and tend to personify natural processes in terms of such mythological concepts as good and evil spirits, fairies, and dragons. The mother and the father also serve as prominent archetypes.

An important concept in Jung’s theory is the existence of two basically different types of personality, mental attitude, and function. When the libido and the individual’s general interest are turned outward toward people and objects of the external world, he or she is said to be extroverted. When the reverse is true, and libido and interest are centered on the individual, he or she is said to be introverted. In a completely normal individual these two tendencies alternate, neither dominating, but usually the libido is directed mainly in one direction or the other; as a result, two personality types are recognizable.

Jung rejected Freud’s distinction between the ego and superego and recognized a portion of the personality, somewhat similar to the superego, that he called the persona. The persona consists of what a person appears to be to others, in contrast to what he or she actually is. The persona is the role the individual chooses to play in life, the total impression he or she wishes to make on the outside world.

Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler, another of Freud’s pupils, differed from both Freud and Jung in stressing that the motivating force in human life is the sense of inferiority, which begins as soon as an infant is able to comprehend the existence of other people who are better able to care for themselves and cope with their environment. From the moment the feeling of inferiority is established, the child strives to overcome it. Because inferiority is intolerable, the compensatory mechanisms set up by the mind may get out of hand, resulting in self-centered neurotic attitudes, overcompensations, and a retreat from the real world and its problems.

Adler laid particular stress on inferiority feelings arising from what he regarded as the three most important relationships: those between the individual and work, friends, and loved ones. The avoidance of inferiority feelings in these relationships leads the individual to adopt a life goal that is often not realistic and frequently is expressed as an unreasoning will to power and dominance, leading to every type of antisocial behavior from bullying and boasting to political tyranny. Adler believed that analysis can foster a sane and rational “community feeling” that is constructive rather than destructive.

Otto Rank

Another student of Freud, Otto Rank, introduced a new theory of neurosis, attributing all neurotic disturbances to the primary trauma of birth. In his later writings he described individual development as a progression from complete dependence on the mother and family, to a physical independence coupled with intellectual dependence on society, and finally to complete intellectual and psychological emancipation. Rank also laid great importance on the will, defined as “a positive guiding organization and integration of self, which utilizes creatively as well as inhibits and controls the instinctual drives.”

Other Psychoanalytic Schools

Later noteworthy modifications of psychoanalytic theory include those of the American psychoanalysts Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan. The theories of Fromm lay particular emphasis on the concept that society and the individual are not separate and opposing forces, that the nature of society is determined by its historic background, and that the needs and desires of individuals are largely formed by their society. As a result, Fromm believed, the fundamental problem of psychoanalysis and psychology is not to resolve conflicts between fixed and unchanging instinctive drives in the individual and the fixed demands and laws of society, but to