Karen Horney: Psychoanalytic Social Theory and Feminist Psychology

Pscyhoanalytic Social Theory

Built on the assumption that social and cultural conditions, especially childhood experiences, are largely responsible for shaping personality.

Womb Envy

Male must have been stronger than the penis envy of the female that men need to deprecate women more than women need to depreciate men.

Cultural and Social expectations

Psychic differences between men and women are not the result of anamoty but rather of ________ and _________.

Competition

Everyone is a real or potential competitor of everyone else.

Basic Hostility

People who do not have their needs for love and affection satisfied during childhood develop ____ towards their parents.

Basic Anxiety

Repressed hostility then leads to profound feelings of insecurity and a vague sense of apprehension. “A feeling of being isolated and helpless in a world conceived as potentially hostile”

Basic hostility and Basic Anxiety

These are “inextricably interwoven.” Hostile impulses are the principal source of basic anxiety,

but basic anxiety can also contribute to feelings of hostility.

Affection

The first protective device that is a strategy that does not always lead to authentic love. In their search for this, some people may try to purchase love with self-effacing compliance, material goods, or sexual favors.

Submissiveness

The second protective device where neurotics may submit themselves either to people or to institutions such as an organization or a religion. Neurotics who submit to another person often do so in order to gain affection.

Power

The third protective device where neurotics may also try to protect themselves by striving for _____, prestige,or possession. It is a defense against the real or imagined hostility of others and takes the form of a tendency to dominate others.

Prestige

Under the protective device of power, it is protection against humiliation and is expressed as a tendency to humiliate others

Possession

Under the protective device of power, it acts as a buffer against destitution and poverty and manifests itself as a tendency to deprive others

Withdrawal

The fourth protective device where neurotics frequently protect themselves against basic anxiety either by developing an independence from others or by becoming emotionally detached from them.

Moving toward people, moving against people, moving away from people

Neurotic trends (3 ways of how peole combat basic anxiety):

Self-hatred

Expressed as either self-contempt or alienation from self.

Isolation

Competitiveness and the basic hostility it spawns result in feelings of _____. These feelings of being alone in a potentially hostile world lead to intensified needs for affection, which, in turn, cause people to overvalue love.

Childhoood

The vast majority of our problems are thought to arise during this developmental stage

The neurotic need for affection and approval.

In their quest for affection and approval, neurotics attempt indiscriminately to please others. They try to live up to the expectations of others, tend to dread self-assertion, and are quite uncomfortable with the hostility of others as well as the hostile feelings within themselves.

The neurotic need for a powerful partner.

Lacking self-confidence, neurotics try to attach themselves to a powerful partner. This need includes an overvaluation of love and a dread of being alone or deserted.

The neurotic need to restrict one’s life within narrow borders.

Neurotics frequently strive to remain inconspicuous, to take second place, and to be content with very little. They downgrade their own abilities and dread making demands on others.

The neurotic need for power.

Power and affection are perhaps the two greatest neurotic needs. The need for power is usually combined with the needs for prestige and possession and manifests itself as the need to control others and to avoid feelings of weakness or stupidity.

The neurotic need to exploit others.

Neurotics frequently evaluate others on the basis of how they can be used or exploited, but at the same time, they fear being exploited by others.

The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige.

Some people combat basic anxiety by trying to be first, to be important, or to attract attention to themselves.

The neurotic need for personal admiration.

Neurotics have a need to be admired for what they are rather than for what they possess. Their inflated self-esteem must be continually fed by the admiration and approval of others.

The neurotic need for ambition and personal achievement.

Neurotics often have a strong drive to be the best—the best salesperson, the best bowler, the best lover. They must defeat other people in order to confirm their superiority.

The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence.

Many neurotics have a strong need to move away from people, thereby proving that they can get along without others.

The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability.

By striving relentlessly for perfection, neurotics receive “proof” of their self-esteem and personal superiority. They dread making mistakes and having personal flaws, and they desperately attempt to hide their weaknesses from others.

Basic Conflict

People can use each of the neurotic trends to solve basic conflict, but unfortunately, these solutions are essentially nonproductive or neurotic. Horney (1950) used this term because very young children are driven in all three directions toward, against, and away from people.

Moving towards people

This neurotic trend does not mean moving toward them in the spirit of genuine love. Rather, it refers to a neurotic need to protect oneself against feelings of helplessness. Basic conflict is helplessness.

Morbid Dependency

In their attempts to protect themselves against feelings of helplessness, compliant people employ either or both of the first two neurotic needs; that is, they desperately strive for affection and approval of others, or they seek a powerful partner who will take responsibility for their lives.

Moving against people

Rather than moving toward people in a posture of submissiveness and dependence, these people move against others by appearing tough or ruthless. They are motivated by a strong need to exploit others and to use them for their own benefit. They seldom admit their mistakes and are compulsively driven to appear perfect, powerful, and superior. Basic conflict is hostility.

Moving away from people

In order to solve the basic conflict of isolation, some people behave in a detached manner and adopt a neurotic trend of ____. This strategy is an expression of needs for privacy, independence, and self-sufficiency. Basic conflict is isolation.

Self-hatred

An intrapsyhic conflict that talks about the interrelated yet equally irrational and powerful tendency to despise one’s real self.

Self-realization

Horney believed that human beings, if given an environment of discipline and warmth, will develop feelings of security and self-confidence and a tendency to move toward _____.

Horney’s Mature Theory

Intrapsychic process originates from interpersonal experiences, but as they become part of person’s belief systems, the develop a life of their own.

Real Self

A kind of self that is alive, unique, and the personal center of the individual. It is the translation or future orientation of the actual self.

Actual Self

Kinds of self at any given moment. Sino ka ngayon.

Ideal Self

Exaggeration of who you can be (ie aspirations that are out of touch from reality).

Self-alienation

It compels people to desperately acquire a stable sense of identity or the process of moving away from the self. This dilemma can be solved by creating an idealized self-image.

Idealized Self-Image

(inflated view of the self) is an extravagantly positive view of oneself that exists only in one’s personal belief system. It is used as a standard for self-evaluation.

Neurotic search for glory, neurotic claims, neurotic pride

The idealized self-image is expressed as (3):

Neurotic search for glory

It is the comprehensive drive toward actualizing the idealized self-image. As neurotics come to believe in the reality of their idealized self, they begin to incorporate it into all aspects of their lives—their goals, their self-concept, and their relations with others.

Need for perfection

Under neurotic search for glory, this refers to the drive to mold the whole personality into the idealized self. Neurotics are not content to merely make a few alterations; nothing short of complete perfection is acceptable.

Tyranny of the Should

They try to achieve perfection by erecting a complex set of “shoulds” and “should nots.” Striving toward an imaginary picture of perfection, neurotics unconsciously tell themselves: “Forget about the disgraceful creature you actually are; this is how you should be”

Neurotic ambition

The compulsive drive toward superiority. Although neurotics have an exaggerated need to excel in everything, they ordinarily channel their energies into those activities that are most likely to bring success. It may also take a less materialistic form, such as being the most saintly or most charitable person in the community.

Drive toward a vindictive triumph

The most destructive element of all. It may be disguised as a drive for achievement or success, but “its chief aim is to put others to shame or defeat them through one’s very success; or to attain the power… to inflict suffering on them—mostly of a humiliating kind”. Grows out of the childhood desire to take revenge for real or imagined humiliations.

Neurotic Claims

In their search for glory, neurotics build a fantasy world—a world that is out of sync with the real world. It grow out of normal needs and wishes.

Neurotic Pride

A false pride based not on a realistic view of the true self but on a spurious image of the idealized self. It is based on based on an idealized image of self and is usually loudly proclaimed in order to protect and support a glorified view of one’s self.

Self-hatred

People with a neurotic search for glory can never be happy with themselves because when they realize that their real self does not match the insatiable demands of their idealized self, they will begin to hate and despise themselves. Measuring your worth based on the idealized self-image.

Six Major Ways in which people express self-hatred

1. Relentless demands on the self

2. Merciless self-accusation

3. Self-contempt

4. Self-frustration

5. Self-torment

6. Self-destructive actions and impulses

Feminine Psychology

Mere translations of male concepts into female-centric concepts. Prescriptive in nature. Provide an appropriate outline on how we can look at psychology.

Feminists Psychology

Letting go of gender differences and arriving into a study of individuals in relation to their sociopolitical contexts

Sociopolitical Contexts

Lived experiences based on social structures [dynamic and the patterns of relationships and interactions that determines how social institutions (organization of people in a society to meets its needs) work]

2 Goals of Feminist Psychology

(1) Bring a better understanding of women’s experiences and the impact that gender plays in the lives of individuals into the field (2) Examine people in relation to their actual lived lives

Central Focus of Feminist Psychology

Departure from instinct psychology to context psychology. A person must be understood in the context of living in constant relationship to his/her outer world: familial relationships, community/or national affiliation.

Sociological Locations

Includes race, educational background, culture, etc. of an individual

First Wave of Feminism

• Women began to enter the workplace in greater numbers following the Great Depression.

• Political rights were “given” to women especially suffrage.

• Activism for the rights of women in recognition of women as equal to men in social and political sectors

Second Shift

After working for 8 hours, they still need to accomplish their household duties. This led to exploitation

Second Wave of Feminism

• Main period of the “recognition” of feminist psychology.

• There was a shift of consciousness about women in psychology.

• Carol Hanish: “The personal is the political”

• Politicization of the private spheres (patriarchal standards; the male gaze)

  • E.g. shaving of legs

  • Drinking Pills

Liberal Feminism

• Focuses on legal and social change

  • “Affirmative action, reproductive rights of legislation, educational reforms, and equal opportunity legislation”

• Rooted in liberalism as a political philosophy

  • Development of freedom in political and economic spheres

  • Individual freedom, democracy, equal opportunity and equal rights

Radical Feminism

• Initially grounded in the writings of Simone de Beauvoir

• Radical mean “of relating to the root”

  • Patriarchy is the root cause of inequality between men and women

  • Women were relegated to “second-class” status in relation to men

• Seeks to dismantle the traditional patriarchal power and gender roles that keep women oppressed

Socialist Feminism

• Firmly entrenched gender roles of society oppress women

  • Gender socialization

• Fundamental structures of oppression are found in the institutional structures of society, including work, education, family structures, and sexuality

  • “Capitalism promulgates oppressive economic practices by subordinating people on the basis of gender, race, and class”

Cultural Feminism

• Women hold special, unique, qualities such as intuition, emotionality, and relationality for which they have traditionally been oppressed

  • “The social problem women encounter is not the differences per se, but rather the differential values placed on those differences”.

• Accused of being essentialist because it posits that the differences between men and women are true

Third Wave of Feminism

• Feminism has failed to address the concerns of women of color, lesbians, immigrants, and religious minorities

• Intersectionality

  • Products of multiple dimensions (i.e color, gender, etc.)

Feminist Contributions to Personality Theory (Early 20th Century)

• Karen Horney was a major inspiration for contemporary feminist psychological theory

  • Paludi (1998) points out that “whereas Freud argued that women were the result of social conditions; Horney argued that social conditions were the cause of women’s behavior”

Feminist Contributions to Personality Theory (Early 20th Century)

• Clara Thompson (1942)

  • Noted the “centrality of relationships in development” and encouraged women to “define themselves on the basis of their own strengths”

Development of Feminist Psychology as a Discipline

• Hannah Lerman (1986) suggested six major factors critical in the creation of feminist personality theory:

  1. Place women as central subject and view them in a fundamentally positive way

  2. Lift from women’s experiences and recognize the diversity and multiplicity of views

  3. The theory should remain close to the data of experience underlying it

  4. Acknowledge that the interval and external worlds of the subjects intermingle

  5. Write in a particularistic language

  6. Support feminist, or nonsexist, psychotherapy

Espin and Gawelck (1992)

• Proposed four additional factors that must be present in order to create a diverse, flexible, and inclusive personality theory

  • All women’s experiences must be heard, understood, and valued

  • Attention to the contextual influences is essential.

  • The psychology of women must be pluralistic.

  • Egalitarian relationships must be at the base of the development theory

Social Constructionism

• Views that reality is socially constructed: Subjective perceptions → Intersubjective Peceptions → Habitualization → Institutionalization → Objective Truths

• The continual process of constructing and integrating the meanings considered chosen within a constantly changing social, cultural, political, and historical contexts.