Professional Wick Checker
I'd say it depends on the example. Freudian Excuse (in general) states it's for traumatic experiences during childhood/youth, but cases like rape and losing one's family as a fully formed adult don't count. So, if your example involves grown adults and a traumatic experience they suffered from not too long ago or even currently as adults, it probably doesn't count.
Although AFAIK, Freudian Excuse is heavily misused for examples where the inciting incident doesn't happen in childhood. Since Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse is based on the former, the scope would depend whether the latter is using the "correct" FE definition or the misuse when it was proposed.
It does seem like the distinction between childhood and adult trauma is less relevant to this trope than Freudian Excuse, since the important part is the dismissal of using the trauma as justification.
Worth noting that if you scroll down to the oldest version of the page in the Launch Pad
, Freudian Excuse is only alluded to in the title and the description seems to imply that it doesn't matter when the trauma happened. (Launch Pad history doesn't allow for linking to specific edits.)
Edited by MorganWick on Jan 9th 2023 at 5:33:46 AM
To me, someone saying "being bullied at school doesn't give you an excuse to kill people" seems the same as someone saying "being bullied at work doesn't give you an excuse to kill people."
The description seems to be about being unsympathetic to a villains / bad person's "sob story motivation", which are not always exclusively a Freudian Excuse.
Freudian Excuse implies something that happened in childhood. But let's say a traumatic event happens to an adult character. If they're told that this event doesn't justify their evil actions, does this count as Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse?