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In the past ten years, movements seem to have gained ground in Freudian analysis which deviate greatly in important points from Freud's original theories. These new movements, in my opinion, can no longer lay claim to the name psycho-analysis. There are, admittedly, various stages of transition, from slight deviations to wide fundamental differences. No great objection, for example, could be put forward concerning the so-called 'neo-analysis' of Schultz-Hencke, if, as its author maintains, it were concerned with mere differences in terminology. Experience warns us, however, that the abandonment of a scientific terminology almost inevitably leads, slowly but surely, to falsification, and eventually to the disintegration of the subject-matter. Usually it is the first step which signalizes the ruin of the whole system.
Rather more harmless, in comparison, seems the movement whose tendency it is to look upon and practise psycho-analysis from the lofty standpoint of a religious orientation. There is not much to be said against this so long as its proponents employ proper psycho-analytic technique in their work, recognizing the theories and not infringing them, with the purpose of combining the fruits of analysis with spiritual guidance and religious influence. It makes little difference whether we interpret 'morality' purely biologically as the sum of all the inhibitions imposed by the social environment, or whether we regard it as the categorical imperative of a transcendent being to which the human being has to answer. Both alternatives concern the same play of energies between drive and inhibition, the latter originating from denials and usually leading to frustration.
Those 'deep psychological' tendencies, however, which result in a so-called 'existentialist analysis' derived from the existentialist philosophy of Heidegger (L. Binswanger, M. Boss, and others), and which do not stop at mere deviations in terminology or philosophical extensions of Freudian theory