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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