Psychoanalytic Social Theory - Karen Horney

Karen Horney

Founder of the assumptions for Psychoanalytic Social Theory.

Psychoanalytic Social Theory

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

Safety and Satisfaction

The two guiding principles of the Psychoanalytic Social Theory.

Neuroses

Attempt to find paths through wilderness full of unknown dangers.

Basic Hostility

Results from childhood feelings of rejection or neglect by parents or from a defense against basic anxiety.

Basic Anxiety

A feeling of being isolated and helpless in a world conceived as potentially hostile.

Defenses against basic anxiety.

Used to protect themeselves against this feeling of being alone in a potentially hostile world.

4 Defenses against basic anxiety.

1. Affection

2. Submissiveness

3. Striving for power, prestige, possesion

4. Withdrawal

Affection

Does not lead to authentic love; people may try to purchase love with self-effacing compliance, material goods, or sexual favors.

Submissiveness

May submit themseleves to people, institutions, organizations, or religion; does this to gain affection.

Striving for Power

A defense against the real or imagined hostility of others and takes the form of a tendency to dominate others.

Striving for Prestige

Protection against humiliation; has a tendency to humiliate others.

Striving for possesion

acts as a buffer against destitution and poverty and manifests itself as a tendency to deprive others

Withdrawal

Developing an independence from others; becoming emotionally detached from them; neurotics feel they cannot be hurt by other people.

Compulsive Drives

Neurotic individuals have the same problems that affect normal people, except neurotics experience them to a greater degree; traps them in a vicious circle.

Neurotic Needs

10 categories; characterizes neurotics in their attempt to combat basic anxiety.

The neurotic need for affection and approval

Attempt to indescriminately to please others.

The neurotic need for 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

They downgrade their oen abilities and dread making demands on others.

The neurotic need for power

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; they fear being exploited by others.

The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige

People trying to be first, to be important, or to attract attention to themeselves.

The neurotic need for personal admiration

Need to be admired for what they are rather than what they possess; inflaated self-esteem must be continually fed by admiration and approval of others.

The neurotic need for ambition and personal achievement

Strong drive to be the best; must defeat other people in order to confirm their superiority.

The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence

Strong need to move away from people; proving that they can get along without others.

The neurotic need for perfection and unnassailability

They dread making mistakes and having personal flaws, and they desperately attempt to hide their weakness from others.

Neurotic Trends

A person's basic attitude toward self and others.

3 Neurotic Trends

1. Moving toward people

2. Moving against people

3. Moving away from people

Basic Conflict

Driven in all three directions - toward, against, and away from people.

Moving Toward People

Neurotic need to protect oneself against feelings of helplessness.

Moving Against People

Motivated by a strong need to exploit others and to use them for their own benefit; they seldom to admit their mistakes; compulsively driven to appear perfect, powerful, and superior.

Moving Away From People

People behave in a detached manner; needs for privacy, independence, and self-sufficeiency.

Intrapsychic Conflicts

Inner conflicts that both normal and neurotic individuals experience.

2 Important Intrapsychic Conflicts

Idealized Self-Image and Self-Hatred.

Idealized Self-image

An attempt to solve conflicts by painting a godlike picture of oneself.

Self-hatred

An interralated yet equally irrational and powerful tendencies to despise one's real self.

3 aspects of Idealized Self-Image

1. The neurotic search for glory

2. Neurotic claims

3. Neurotic pride

Neurotic Search for Glory

Comprehensive drive toward actualizing ideal self.

3 Elements of The Neurotic Search for Glory

1. Need for perfection

2. Neurotic ambition

3. The drive toward a vindictive triumph

Need for perfection

The drive to mold whole personality into the idealized self.

Tyranny of the should

To achieve perfection by erecting a complex set of "shoulds" and "should nots".

Neurotic Ambition

Compulsive drive towards superiority

Drive toward a vindictive triumph

"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"

Neurotic Claims

Neurotics build a fantasy world—a world that is out of sync with the real world; they proclaim that they are special and therefore entitled to be treated in accordance with their idealized view of themselves.

Neurotic Pride

is 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.

First, Self-hatred may result in relentless demands on the self

Which are exemplified by the tyranny of the 'should'.

Second mode of expressing self-hatred is merciless self-accusation.

Self-accusation may take a variety of forms—from obviously grandiose expressions, such as taking responsibility for natural disasters, to scrupulously questioning the virtue of their own motivations.

Third, self-hatred may take the form of self-contempt,

Which might be expressed as belittling, disparaging, doubting, discrediting, and ridiculing oneself. Self-contempt prevents people from striving for improvement or achievement.

Fourth expression of self-hatred is self-frustration.

Distinguished between healthy self-discipline and neurotic self-frustration. The former involves postponing or forgoing pleasurable activities in order to achieve reasonable goals. Self-frustration stems from self-hatred and is designed to actualize an inflated self-image.

Fifth, self-hatred may be manifested as self-torment, or self-torture.

Self-torment can exist in each of the other forms of self-hatred, it becomes a separate category when people's main intention is to inflict harm or suffering on themselves. Some people attain masochistic satisfaction by anguishing over a decision, exaggerating the pain of a headache, cutting themselves with a knife, starting a fight that they are sure to lose, or inviting physical abuse.

Sixth and final form of self-hatred is self-destructive actions and impulses.

Physical or psychological, conscious or unconscious, acute or chronic, carried out in action or enacted only in the imagination.

Feminine Psychology

To Horney, a revision of psychoanalysis to encompass the psychological conflicts inherent in the traditional ideal of womanhood and women's roles. (Against the ideas of Freud).

Psychotherapy - Horneyian Therapy

The general goal is to help patients gradually grow in the direction of self-realization. More specifically, the aim is to have patients give up their idealized self-image, relinquish their neurotic search for glory, and change self-hatred to an acceptance of the real self.

Horneyian Techniques for Psychotherapy

Dream Interpretation and Free Association