Chapter Ten - Jung, Adler, and the Breakups

CHAPTER TEN

Jung, Adler, and the Breakups

BY THE 1910S, Freud wasn’t just the father of psychoanalysis.
He was the patriarch surrounded by a tight inner circle of devoted followers who called themselves the “Wednesday Psychological Society” (because, yes, they met on Wednesdays).

But Freud wasn’t a chill mentor. He was more like a wizard with a chosen apprentice and he thought he’d found one.

Carl Jung.

A Swiss psychiatrist. Brilliant. Tall. Blond. Charismatic. Protestant. (Which, for Freud, was a big deal, finally someone outside the Jewish intelligentsia joining the cause.)

Freud saw Jung as the heir.
Jung saw Freud as the master.
It was bromantic… until it wasn’t.

At first, they vibed hard.

Deep dives into dreams.
A shared obsession with symbols and mythology.
Long letters that basically count as intellectual love notes.

But cracks formed.
Because Jung… didn’t buy the sex thing.

He agreed that the unconscious was real, but he thought Freud’s libido obsession was too narrow. Jung wanted to talk about archetypes. Myths. The collective unconscious. A spiritual, shared psychic layer across humanity.

Freud was not impressed.
Jung was veering too far into mysticism.
Freud doubled down on biology. Jung doubled down on metaphysics.

The rift widened.

Then Jung published Psychology of the Unconscious, which politely but clearly rejected core Freudian doctrine. Freud felt betrayed. He cut off contact. The father disowned the son.

Another early follower, Alfred Adler, was focused less on libido and more on power. Specifically, how people compensate for feelings of inferiority.

Adler saw human psychology as a struggle for control, competence, and significance. Not sexual repression. More like social navigation. He introduced concepts like the inferiority complex, overcompensation, and the drive for mastery.

Freud thought Adler was diluting the core message, turning psychoanalysis into something too soft and too behavioral.

So Adler left.
Started his own school: Individual Psychology.

And just like that, Freud’s tight circle started crumbling. Torn apart not by scandal or scandalous dreams, but by theories.

Freud wasn’t just losing friends.
He was losing control.

The movement he founded was no longer his alone. His disciples were becoming rivals. Offshoots. Competitors. Each one with their own flavor of the unconscious.

Jungian psychology became spiritual and symbolic.
Adlerian psychology became motivational and social.
Freudian psychoanalysis stayed dark, deep, and sexual.

And the world? It started to choose sides.

Some followed Freud’s original vision.
Others drifted toward Jung’s mysticism or Adler’s optimism.

Freud, meanwhile, grew more isolated.
More rigid.
More convinced that only he truly understood the unconscious.

But here's the twist:
Even as his inner circle collapsed, Freud’s legacy grew.

Because the split meant psychoanalysis had become too big for one man.
It was now a field.
A culture.
A world.

And like any good father figure…
Freud was now being repressed by his own children.