Post-Freudians

Psychoanalysis is frequently deployed as a categorical umbrella to describe the many schools of thought which take their various points of departure from the work of Sigmund Freud, regardless of their theoretical elaborations and departures. Classical Freudian theory arose from the positivistic science of the Victorian Era. The post-Freudians, however, while agreeing with Freud that childhood experiences are important, stressed more holistic shaping factors on how the environment and culture interact with biology to influence personality development, turning, in varying degrees, away from his perceived reductive emphasis on sexuality. The most notable post-Freudians were Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Erik Erikson, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Harry Stack Sullivan. The post-Freudians, while fluent in the positivist discourse of their age, were steeped, additionally, in the emerging disciplines of anthropology and sociology, and their various schools and psychologies strongly reflect these...