The main difference is how they treat drives and the role of social context in shaping personality. Freud emphasized deep inner conflicts and the primacy of sexual and aggressive drives within the unconscious, while the neo-Freudians expanded the theory to include social, cultural, and interpersonal factors, often deemphasizing or reinterpreting the centrality of childhood sexuality. Key points

• Core focus on unconscious drives
  • Freud: Unconscious motivates behavior; early childhood conflicts, especially related to sexuality, are foundational.
  • Neo-Freudians: Acknowledge the unconscious but downplay the exclusive centrality of sexuality; emphasize social needs, relationships, and adaptation to society.
• Role of social and cultural factors
  • Freud: Inner conflicts and instinctual impulses primarily shape personality.
  • Neo-Freudians: Interpersonal dynamics, family, culture, and society are integral to development.
• Expansion of concepts
  • Freud: The psyche structured around id, ego, and superego with psychosexual stages.
  • Neo-Freudians: Retain psychoanalytic roots but modify or replace some ideas; for example, Adler emphasizes social interest and striving for superiority, Jung introduces the collective unconscious, Erikson highlights psychosocial development across the lifespan, and Horney focuses on basic anxiety and social relationships.
• Treatment implications
  • Freud: Psychoanalytic therapy aims to bring repressed conflicts to consciousness through methods like free association and dream analysis.
  • Neo-Freudians: Therapies often focus more on current social and relational factors, coping strategies, and broader cultural context, sometimes using shorter or more directive approaches.

If you’d like, I can tailor this into a concise comparison table or provide brief bios for the major neo-Freudians (Adler, Jung, Horney, Erikson) to illustrate how each diverged from Freud.