CHAPTER 6: Karen HORNEY

Horney: Psychoanalytic Social Theory

Biography of Karen Horney
- Complicated family - youngest child of a 50-year old father and his second wife. Basically, they are the second
family.
- Childhood was rough - Favored treatment given to her older brother ➔ She considered her father a religious
hypocrite - Her father was stern and she worried about the bitterness and discord between her parents
- She was one of the first women to be enrolled in medicine school - Decided to be a physician at the age of 13 but
no university in Germany admitted women. By age 16, entered gymnasium, against her father’s will, a school that
would lead to university then to medical school. Entered University of Freiburg in 1906 to study medicine.
- Meet Oskar Horney, got married in 1909, and settled in Berlin. ➔ She had many love affairs.
 Neurotic means you're afflicted by neurosis, a word that has been in use since the 1700s to describe mental,
emotional, or physical reactions that are drastic and irrational. At its root, a neurotic behavior is an automatic,
unconscious effort to manage deep anxiety.

PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIAL THEORY

- Karen Horney (pronounced Horn-eye) was built on the assumption that social and cultural conditions, especially
childhood experiences, are largely responsible for shaping personality.
- People who do not have their needs for love and affection satisfied during childhood develop basic hostility toward
their parents and, as a consequence, suffer from basic anxiety.
- Horney theorized that people combat basic anxiety by adopting one of three fundamental styles of relating to
others:
 moving toward people
 moving against people
 moving away from people
- Normal individuals may use any of these modes of relating to other people, but neurotics are compelled to rigidly
rely on only one.
- Neurotics' compulsive behavior generates a basic intrapsychic conflict that may take the form of either an
idealized self-image or self-hatred.
- The idealized self-image is expressed as (1) neurotic search for glory, (2) neurotic claims, or (3) neurotic pride.
- Self-hatred is expressed as either self-contempt or alienation from self.

HORNEY VS. FREUD

- First, she cautioned that strict adherence to orthodox psychoanalysis would lead to stagnation in both theoretical
thought and therapeutic practice (Horney, 1937).
- Second, Horney (1937, 1939) objected to Freud’s ideas on feminine psychology, a subject we return to later.
Third, she stressed the view that psychoanalysis should move beyond instinct theory and emphasize the
importance of cultural influences in shaping personality.
- She claimed that neuroses are not the result of instincts but rather of the person’s “attempt to find paths through a
wilderness full of unknown dangers”
- Her main quarrel with Freud was not so much the accuracy of his observations but the validity of his
interpretations.
- Her view of humanity is an optimistic one and is centered on cultural forces that are amenable to change (Horney,
1950).

IMPACT OF CULTURE
- Modern culture, she contended, is based on competition among individuals. “Everyone is a real or potential
competitor of everyone else”
- Competitiveness and the basic hostility it spawns result in feelings of isolation.
- These feelings of being alone in a potentially hostile world lead to intensified needs for affection, which, in turn,
cause people to overvalue love.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES

- Horney believed that neurotic conflict can stem from almost any developmental stage, but childhood is the age
from which the vast majority of problems arise.
- Horney (1939) hypothesized that a difficult childhood is primarily responsible for neurotic needs.
- These needs become powerful because they are the child’s only means of gaining feelings of safety.
Nevertheless, no single early experience is responsible for later personality. Horney cautioned that “the sum total
of childhood experiences brings about a certain character structure, or rather, starts its development”.
BASIC HOSTILITY AND BASIC ANXIETY
- Horney (1950) believed that each person begins life with the potential for healthy development, but like other
living organisms, people need favorable conditions for growth.
- A multitude of adverse influences may interfere with these favorable conditions.
- Primary among these is the parents’ inability or unwillingness to love their child.
- Because of their own neurotic needs, parents often dominate, neglect, overprotect, reject, or overindulge.
- If parents do not satisfy the child’s needs for safety and satisfaction, the child develops feelings of basic hostility
toward the parents.
- However, children seldom overtly express this hostility as rage; instead, they repress their hostility toward their
parents and have no awareness of it.
- Repressed hostility then leads to profound feelings of insecurity and a vague sense of apprehension

BASIC ANXIETY
- Horney (1950) defined as “a feeling of being isolated and helpless in a world conceived as potentially hostile”
(p.18) Earlier she gave a more graphic description, calling basic anxiety "a feeling of being small, insignificant,
helpless, deserted, endangered, in a world that is out of to abuse, cheat, attack, humiliate, betray, envy" (Horney,
1937, p. 92)
- Basic anxiety is not a neurosis but "it is the nutritive soil out of which a definite neurosis may develop at any time"
(horney, 1937, p. 89).

COMPULSIVE DRIVES
- Neurotic individuals have the same problems that affect normal people, except neurotics experience them to a
greater degree. Horney (1942) insisted that neurotics do not enjoy misery and suffering. They cannot change their
behavior by free will but must continually and compulsively protect themselves against basic anxiety.
- This defensive strategy traps them in a vicious circle in which their compulsive needs to reduce basic anxiety lead
to behaviors that perpetuate low self-esteem, generalized hostility, inappropriate striving for power, inflated
feelings of superiority, and persistent apprehension, all of which result in more basic anxiety.

NEUROTIC NEEDS
Horney tentatively identified 10 categories of neurotic needs that characterize neurotics in their attempts to combat basic
anxiety.
 The neurotic need for affection and approval;
 The neurotic need for a powerful partner;
 The neurotic need to restrict one’s life within narrow borders;
 The neurotic need for power;
 The neurotic need to exploit others;
 The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige;
 The neurotic need for personal admiration;
 The neurotic need for ambition and personal achievement;
 The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence;
 The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability.

NEUROTIC TRENDS
- As her theory evolved, Horney began to see that the list of 10 neurotic needs could be grouped into three general
categories, each relating to a person’s basic attitude toward self and others.
- In healthy children, these three drives are not necessarily incompatible.
- But the feelings of isolation and helplessness that Horney described as basic anxiety drive some children to act
compulsively, thereby limiting their repertoire to a single neurotic trend.

MOVING TOWARD PEOPLE

- Horney’s concept of moving toward people 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.

MOVING AGAINST PEOPLE

- Just as compliant people assume that everyone is nice, aggressive people take for granted that everyone is
hostile.
- 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.
- Karens, not the Horney. karens on the internet.
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 moving away from people.
- Strategy is an expression of needs for privacy, independence, and self-sufficiency. Again, each of these needs
can lead to positive behaviors, with some people satisfying these needs in a healthy fashion.
- However, these needs become neurotic when people try to satisfy them by compulsively putting emotional
distance between themselves and other people.

INTRAPSYCHIC CONFLICTS
- As her theory evolved, she began to place greater emphasis on the inner conflicts that both normal and neurotic
individuals experience.
- Intrapsychic processes originate from interpersonal experiences; but as they become part of a person’s belief
system, they develop a life of their own—an existence separate from the interpersonal conflicts that gave them
life.
IDEALIZED SELF-IMAGE
- Idealized self-image is an attempt to solve conflicts by painting a godlike picture of oneself. Self-hatred is an
interrelated yet equally irrational and powerful tendency to despise one’s real self.
- 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 self-realization.
- Feeling alienated from themselves, people need desperately to acquire a stable sense of identity.
- This dilemma can be solved only by creating an idealized self-image, an extravagantly positive view of
themselves that exists only in their personal belief system.

The Neurotic Search for Glory

- 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.

Neurotic Claims
- A second aspect of the idealized image is neurotic claims. In their search for glory, neurotics build a fantasy world
—a world that is out of sync with the real world.

Neurotic Pride
- The third aspect of an idealized image is neurotic pride, a false pride based not on a realistic view of the true self
but on a spurious image of the idealized self. Neurotic pride is qualitatively different from healthy pride or realistic
self-esteem.

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.
- There are 6 major ways of expressing self-hatred
SELF-HATRED EXPRESSIONS
 relentless demands on the self, ( Tyranny of the should)
 merciless self-accusation (Impostor syndrome)
 self-contempt, which might be expressed as belittling, disparaging, doubting, discrediting, and ridiculing oneself.
 self-frustration. Horney (1950) 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.
 self-torment, or self-torture. Although 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.
 self-destructive actions and impulses, which may be physical or psychological, conscious or unconscious, acute
or chronic, carried out in action or enacted only in the imagination.

FEMININE PSYCHOLOGY
- For Horney, psychic differences between men and women are not the result of anatomy but rather of cultural and
social expectations.
- Horney insisted that basic anxiety is at the core of men's need to subjugate women, and women's wish to
humiliate men.
- Although Horney (1939) recognized the existence of the Oedipus complex, she insisted that it was due to certain
environmental conditions and not to biology.
- Boys sometimes do express a desire to have a baby, but this desire is not the result of a universal male “womb
envy.”

PSYCHOTHERAPY
- 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.
- Self-understanding must go beyond information; it must be accompanied by an emotional experience. Patients
must understand their pride system, their idealized self-image, their neurotic search for glory, their self-hatred,
their shoulds, their alienation from self, and their conflicts.

CRITIQUE OF HORNEY
- Falsifiability is of course a problem as it based in psychoanalysis
- the theory did not generate much research
- organization of knowledge is almost only limited to neurotics/ abnormal personality
- it guides action but only a little (only for neurotics)
- high internal consistency and precise (parsimony)

CONCEPTS OF HUMANITY
- Unlike freud, Horney believed that people can change (free will)
- optimistic
- middle position in causality and teleology
- middle position in conscious and unconscious
- social influence over biology
- highlights similarities over differences