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Jung, Adler, Horney, and Erikson and Freud

Compare and contrast the theories of Jung, Adler, Horney, and Erikson with the theory of Freud. Compare and contrast their theoretical perspective, major concepts, and approach to therapy.

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In order to compare and contrast the theories of Jung, Adler, Courtney, and Erikson, with the theory of Freud, it is first necessary to state Freud's theoretical perspective. Freud's theoretical perspective is that an individual's agitation or source of psychological problems is mainly contained within their subconscious. This essentially means that an individual's repressed memories, as well as experiences that they have had during childhood and throughout the lives that are within their subconscious, are largely responsible for the desires and or drives that these individuals have that cause them to act in certain ways. In addition, for was theoretical perspective includes the premise that most individuals are not even aware of the subconscious drives, and make an effort to suppress those drives and or memories that they find unpleasant and or unproductive. This leads to the theoretical perspective that these unconscious or suppressed memories and urges leads to an internal psychological conflict within the individual which results in an unbalanced psychological state that leads to detrimental psychological conditions such as anxiety and neurotic behavior etc. It is due to these factors that Freud's major concepts include that the experiences that an individual has in their very early childhood coupled with their inherited genetic personality traits leads to conscious and unconscious drives that affected individuals behavior throughout their lifetime if not addressed through therapy etc. Another of Freud's major concepts is the concept that individuals develop defense mechanisms by which to deal with unpleasant unconscious or conscious memories which result in activities such as psychological denial and repression of these memories etc. a very important and major concepts developed by Freud is the concept that the only true way by which to free oneself from the psychological and emotional disturbances caused by unconscious thoughts or yearning etc., is to allow them to come to the surface and face or release them. Due to these factors, Freud's major approach to therapy is through free association, which allows the patient to freely speak about their subconscious and conscious thoughts which results in the patient as well as the therapist becoming aware of the root causes of their psychological disturbance. This allows for the patient to be able to better understand ...