Theories of Personality: Karen Horney

Biography

• 1885 - 1952
• Born near Hamburg, Germany
• Encouraged to study medicine by her mother
• Received her degree from University of Berlin
• Experienced challenges of having a career and children
• Moved to US in 1932

Neopsychoanalytic

• Reaction to Freud
• Humans motivated by need for security and love, not by sex and aggression
• Influence of gender experience
• More emphasis on social factors in influencing personality
• Level of warmth can affect personality

Safety Need

• Social forces in childhood, not biological forces influence personality
• No universal stages of development
• Childhood is dominated by need for security and freedom from fear
  • Parents foster security by treating the child with warmth and affection
  • Normality of personality development direct function of level of warmth and affection received by parents

Basic Anxiety

• Pervasive feeling of loneliness and helplessness
• Foundation of neurosis
• 4 ways we protect ourselves in childhood from basic anxiety:
  • Securing love and affection
  • Being submissive
  • Attaining power
  • Withdrawing

Neurotic Needs

• Irrational defenses against anxiety that become a permanent part of personality and that affect behavior

• Encompass the 4 ways of protecting ourselves against anxiety

• 10 Neurotic Needs

  • Affection and approval (gaining affection)
  • A dominant partner (submissive)
  • Power (attaining power)
  • Exploitation (attaining power)
  • Prestige (attaining power)
  • Admiration (attaining power)
  • achievement/ambition (attaining power)
  • Self-sufficiency (withdrawing)
  • Perfection (withdrawing)
  • Narrow limits to life (withdrawing)

  

• 3 categories of behaviors and attitudes toward oneself and others that express a person’s needs

• Neurotic persons are compelled to act based on one of the neurotic trends:

  • Movement toward others (compliant personality)
  • Primary Modes of Relating to Others
    • Moving toward (compliance): accepting one’s helplessness and becoming compliant
  • Basic Orientations toward Life
    • Self-effacing solution: an appeal to be loved
  • Neurotic Trends
    • Exaggerated need for affection and approval
    • Need for a dominant power
  • Movement against others (aggressive personality)
  • Primary Modes of Relating to Others
    • Moving against (hostility): rebelling and resisting others to protect one’s self from a threatening environment
  • Basic Orientations toward Life
    • Self-expansive solution: a striving for mastery
  • Neurotic Trends
    • Exaggerated need for power
    • Need to exploit others
    • Exaggerated need for social recognition/prestige
    • Exaggerated need for personal admiration
    • Exaggerated ambition for personal achievement
  • Movement away from others (detached personality)
  • Primary Modes of Relating to Others
    • Moving away (detachment): isolating one’s self to avoid involvement with others
  • Basic Orientations toward Life
    • Resignation solution: a desire to be free of others
  • Neurotic Trends
    • Need to restrict one’s self within narrow boundaries
    • Exaggerated need for self-sufficiency and independence
    • Need for perfection and unassailability

Idealized Self-Image

• Normal People

  • Built on flexible, realistic, assessment of one’s abilities

• Neurotic People

  • Inflexible, unrealistic, self-appraisal

• Tyranny of the Shoulds

  • Used by neurotics to attain the idealized self
  • Deny true self and behave in terms of what we think we should be doing

• Externalization

  • Reduce conflict caused by discrepancy between ideal and actual self

  

Feminine Psychology

• Psychological theory that focuses on women’s experiences
• Womb Envy
  • Women have a superior role in sexual life due to ability to bear and nurse children; men experience intense envy
  • Impressive achievements of men in creative fields may be seen as compensations for inability to bear children

Criticisms of Horney

• Theory of personality not as well constructed as Freudian theory
• Ignores roles of Sociology and Anthropology in influencing personality
• Observations too influenced by middle class America

Contributions of Horney

• Contribution to Feminist Psychology
• Influence on Erikson and Maslow
• More optimistic view of personality than Freud
• Accounts for social factors in shaping personality

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