Changes

The breakup of Freud's friendship with Wilhelm Fliess could be called, albeit a bit arbitrarily, the first psychoanalytic "split." The way they split seems almost paradigmatic: two passionate researchers who seemed similar were able to collaborate in spite of profound contradictions between them that remained hidden until the moment one of them began to assert himself.

The 1912 break between Freud and Alfred Adler could be described in just the same way, and likewise that of Freud and Carl Jung in 1913. Neither of the two came to Freud empty-handed. They each had their own theoretical ideas and their own body of research. And their encounters with Freud were for a time more like those between like-minded individuals. They were not waiting for any kind of illumination, which they believed they already possessed, but rather supplemental clarifications, or better still, Freud's approval. Both followed theoretical tendencies that diverged from Freud's own ideas and personality and that indicated orientations characteristic of their time: Adler emphasized social factors, under the influence of the Marxist movement that unfolded for most of the twentieth century; Jung was preoccupied with mysticism and the esoteric tradition from which Freud, in spite of his curiosity, kept a distance in his theorizing, if not in private life. Each of them founded parallel movements that refused to take any advantage of their connections to psychoanalysis even by virtue of their names: Adler's "individual psychology" and Jung's "analytical psychology." Wilhelm Stekel, who left the psychoanalytic movement after Adler in 1912, remained a marginal figure and only had a few disciples who followed him personally without constituting a group.