Neo-Freudianism

Neo-Freudianism is a psychoanalytic school of thought that developed out of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis but reoriented it toward social, cultural and interpersonal factors rather than Freud's own emphasis on biological drives and the unconscious id. The neo-Freudians, a loosely linked group of mostly American theorists and writers active in the mid-twentieth century, including Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan and Erik Erikson, sought to restate psychoanalytic theory in sociological and interpersonal terms, arguing that personality is shaped substantially by a person's social environment and relationships rather than by instinctual conflict alone. The movement retained Freud's core concept of unconscious mental processes while departing from his psychosexual stage theory and his emphasis on innate biological drives, helping open psychoanalysis to broader cultural and social critique in the decades following Freud's death.