How to Use Freudian in a Sentence

Freudian

adjective
  • In Freudian terms, the ego is not a master in its own house.
    — Orna Guralnik, New York Times, 2023-05-16
  • And here’s where things get tricky, and more than a little Freudian.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 2023-08-12
  • In a Freudian way, there’s also a weird obsession with your friend’s hot mom.
    — Joel Khalili, WIRED, 2025-01-06
  • In fact, the South Africa native made something of a Freudian slip.
    — Jp Mangalindan, Peoplemag, 2023-07-25
  • To get even more Freudian, Pinocchio runs off and goes to pleasure island.
    — Jim Ryan, Forbes.com, 2025-04-03
  • Bradley gave the epic a feminist-pagan spin, White a Freudian one.
    — Elizabeth Hand, Washington Post, 2024-07-16
  • While that Freudian analysis is certainly up for debate, there could be something to it.
    — Danielle Sinay, Glamour, 2024-01-31
  • Heavy cannons are Freudian winks at the opera’s libidinous energies.
    — Scott Cantrell, Dallas News, 2023-03-30
  • There’s a Freudian idea in which an individual projects their thoughts and feelings to another person.
    — Yeo Boon Ping, CNBC, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Along the way, Joe’s father shows up, triggering 15 minutes of mild Freudian trauma.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 2023-12-15
  • Is the entire country suffering from a Freudian desire to relive the consummation of high-school prom?
    — Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 2024-01-31
  • Think of all the Freudian puns imaginable, then market them: Freudian slip-pers, iceberg fridge magnets, Persian rug tea towels.
    — Maya Ibbitson, Architectural Digest, 2024-09-12
  • To Didion’s Freudian analyst, the mother-daughter dynamic was everything, and the book suggests that the mother fell short.
    — Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times, 2025-04-22
  • These are Gothic sci-fi slashers built on a chassis sturdy enough that, when combined with the Freudian nightmare of its central monster, are able to support all manner of ideas and wild tonal shifts.
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 12 Aug. 2025
  • If that Freudian slip was our cold civil war's Fort Sumter, then Obama's presidency that followed was the extended opening campaign.
    — Gordon G. Chang, Newsweek, 2025-01-24
  • Because of all the things Barbie has done in her 32 years, from disco dancing to running a dude ranch, that little doll has never submitted herself to Freudian analysis.
    — Merrie Monteagudo, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2023-07-28
  • The guy who seemed destined to replace his father, a fulfillment of his dreams and his Freudian battle, was left with nothing — or, to clarify, left with nothing but the consolations of billions of dollars.
    — Matthew Gilbert, BostonGlobe.com, 2023-05-29
  • Altman later recanted his comments and said they were taken out of context–but his Freudian slip did illustrate the ignorance of Silicon Valley.
    — Vivek Wadhwa, Fortune, 2023-09-01
  • Its storytelling is straightforward, familiar, and even didactic, culminating in a dime-store Freudian sequence which flashes back to a moment from John’s childhood in which his father wins a painting contest at a local fair.
    — Natalia Winkelman, IndieWire, 2025-01-28
  • The sequence contains Freudian layers: The 1978 comedy tells the story of a gay couple who masquerade as straight to be accepted by the conservative parents of their son’s fiancée.
    — Eliana Dockterman, TIME, 2024-10-08
  • My original motivation was really to have to write a story that would use my subconscious strengths to explore the question of evil, which is at the root of the Bible, at the root of a lot of Greek philosophy, and a lot of Freudian psychology.
    — Mathew Rodriguez, Them, 2024-12-09
  • Like crosswords, Freudian psychoanalysis runs on word association and linguistic substitutions.
    — Anna Shechtman, Harper's Magazine, 2024-02-09
  • Rather, here in the New World, popularized versions of Freudian theory justified relinquishment: Young mothers were neurotics with pregnancy fantasies that stemmed from a confused sense of womanhood.
    — Maria Laurino, The New Republic, 2023-06-29
  • This question arises considering the rapid evolution akin to Freudian/Jungian theories, where each successive ‘generation’ overcomes or integrates with its ‘parent.’ Eshed doesn’t think so.
    — Brianna Kamienski, USA TODAY, 2024-05-31

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Freudian.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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