PERSONALITY THEORY

KAREN HORNEY

PRESENTED BY;

RISHA
SANDRA
SAFWAN
LIYA
SHAYISTA
 INTRODUCTION
 Karen Horney was born on
September 15 , 1885 , Germany.
 She desired to become a
physician, Horney succeeded in
achieving goal.
 In 1906 Horney enrolled at the
university of Freiburg, one of the
first German women to study
medicine
 1952 She established the Karen
Horney clinic.
 She passed away on December 4,
1952 at the age of 65 from cancer.
 HER CONTRIBUTION
 Karen Horney contributed ideas on personality and
neuroses. She changed the way psychologist think
about the development of personality . She also defined
how unfulfilled basic needs can lead to anxiety and
neuroses.
 Horney introduced the idea of neurotic needs. A
neurotic need arises when a person’s basic need are
not met, leading to anxiety and an attempt fill the need.
Horney proposed three specific neurotic trends, which
are rooted in how an individual interacts with and
perceives other people;
• the Compliant type (moves towards people),
• the Aggressive type (moves against people),
• the Detached type (moves away from people).
 Here are the key points on Karen Horney’s views on
the importance of childhood experiences:

1]Primary Source of Neurotic Conflict:

•Horney believed that neurotic conflicts could arise from any
developmental stage, but most stem from childhood.
•Traumatic childhood events (e.g., sexual abuse, beatings,
rejection, or neglect) significantly impact a child’s future
development.
2]Lack of Warmth and Affection:
• Horney argued that most debilitating [ weaker] childhood
experiences are due to a lack of genuine warmth and
affection.
• Her own life reflected this idea, as she lacked love from her
father but shared a close relationship with her mother,
3]Role of Difficult Childhood in Neurotic Needs:
•According to Horney, a challenging childhood leads to
neurotic needs, as children depend on these needs to
feel safe.
•However, no single experience determines personality;
rather, it’s the totality of childhood experiences that
shapes personality development.
4]Character Structure Formation:
•Horney emphasized that childhood experiences
collectively initiate the development of one’s character
structure.
•Later attitudes toward others stem from this character
structure, which is rooted in childhood experiences
rather than merely repeating infantile behaviours.
5] Influence of Later Experiences:
•While later experiences can shape personality,
especially in mentally healthy individuals, Horney
believed childhood experiences are primarily
responsible for personality formation.
•People who rigidly repeat behaviour patterns do so
because they interpret new experiences based on their
established childhood patterns.
 NEUROTIC NEEDS

A neurotic need is a compulsive, excessive, and

maladaptive need that arises as a defence against basic
anxiety—feelings of helplessness, insecurity, and fear
stemming from childhood experiences. These needs are
not driven by genuine, healthy desires but by an attempt
to cope with or avoid feelings of anxiety and
vulnerability. Essentially, neurotic needs represent a
person's attempt to manage inner conflict and emotional
distress in unhealthy ways.
 Horney categorized neurotic needs into ten types,
grouped into three main strategies that individuals
use to cope with anxiety:

1. Need for Affection and Approval strong desire to be

liked, accepted, and approved by others. People with
this need tend to prioritize pleasing others to avoid
rejection or criticism.
2. Need for a powerful partner This need involves
relying on another person to solve problems and take
control of one's life. It stems from a fear of being unable
to manage independently.
3. Need for Restriction of One's Life within Narrow
Limits: People with this need tend to avoid taking risks
or engaging in situations that may require effort,
change, or emotional investment. They limit their
experiences to minimize the risk of failure or
disappointment.
4. Need for Power :This need involves a strong desire to
control, dominate, and have power over others, often to
compensate for feelings of weakness or inferiority.
5. Need to Exploit Others People: with this need tend to
manipulate or take advantage of others to get what they
want. It's a way to feel powerful and superior over
others.
6. Need for Social Recognition or Prestige: The need for
admiration, respect, or recognition from others. This
may include a strong desire for fame, wealth, or social
status to feel validated and valuable.
7. Need for Personal Achievement: This need involves
striving for excellence and success to prove one's worth
and to avoid feelings of inadequacy or failure.
8. Need for Perfection and Unassailability People with
this need strive for perfection and fear being vulnerable
or criticized. They aim to appear flawless, both in their
behaviour and in their achievements, in order to avoid
feelings of inferiority or inadequacy.
9 Need for Self-Sufficiency and Independence A desire
to be entirely self-reliant and not depend on anyone else.
Individuals with this need may isolate themselves and
avoid seeking help, fearing that dependence will lead to
weakness or vulnerability.
10.The Need to Unobtrusively Avoid Conflict: A tendency
to avoid any kind of confrontation, disagreement, or
emotional expression, often out of fear of disapproval or
rejection.
BASIC ANXIETY AND BASIC
HOSTILITY
 Karen Horney’s theory on child development and the
origins of basic anxiety can be summarized in the
following points:
1] Innate Potential for Healthy Development: Horney
believed that each person is born with the potential to
develop in a healthy way, similar to other living
organisms.

2] Need for Favourable Conditions: For healthy

growth, children require favourable conditions, such
as a warm, loving environment that is neither overly
permissive nor too strict
3] Balance of Love and Discipline: Children need to
experience both genuine love and healthy discipline,
which helps them feel safe and satisfied and allows them
to grow in alignment with their “real self.”

4] Adverse Influences and Parental Impact:

Unfavourable conditions, especially stemming from
parents’ inability or unwillingness to provide love, can
hinder a child’s healthy development.
5] Parental Behaviours Leading to Insecurity: Parents
may engage in behaviours like domination, neglect,
overprotection, rejection, or overindulgence, often due
to their own unmet neurotic needs.

6] Basic Hostility: When parents fail to meet children’s

needs for safety and satisfaction, children may develop
unconscious hostility toward them, although they usually
repress these hostile feelings rather than express them
openly.
7] Basic Anxiety: Repressed hostility contributes to a
pervasive sense of insecurity and fear, known as “basic
anxiety.” This is defined as a feeling of being isolated
and helpless in a world perceived as potentially hostile.

8] Characteristics of Basic Anxiety: Horney described

basic anxiety as feeling “small, insignificant, helpless,
deserted, endangered” in a world that appears
threatening and out to harm or exploit.
NEUROTIC TRENDS
MOVING TOWARD PEOPLE
Moving Toward People- Horney's concept of moving
toward people does not refer to approaching them out
of genuine love, but rather as a neurotic attempt to
defend oneself against feelings of helplessness.
To cope with these feelings, individuals with a
compliant character may rely on one or both of the first
two neurotic needs: they may seek affection and
approval from others or attempt to find a dominant
partner who will assume control over their lives.
• Horney (1937) described these tendencies as "morbid
dependency," a precursor to the modern concept of "co
dependency.
• “The neurotic pattern of moving toward people
encompasses a set of strategies—essentially a
comprehensive approach to thinking, feeling, and
acting, or, as Horney described it, "a whole way of life."
She also referred to it as a "philosophy of life."
MOVING AGAINST PEOPLE
While compliant individuals assume that everyone is
kind, aggressive people tend to view others as hostile.
As a result, they adopt a strategy of moving against
people.
 Neurotically aggressive individuals are just as
compulsive as compliant ones, with their behaviour
driven by basic anxiety. Rather than adopting a posture
of submission and dependence, they engage with
others in a manner that appears tough, ruthless, or
domineering.
 These individuals are motivated by a deep need to
exploit others for personal gain.
They rarely acknowledge their mistakes and are
compulsively driven to present themselves as flawless,
powerful, and superior.
 The neurotic trend of moving against people involves
five of the ten neurotic needs:
• the need for power,
• the need to exploit others,
• the need for recognition and prestige,
• the need to be admired,
• the need to achieve.
Aggressive people are more focused on winning than
on enjoying the process itself.
Although they may appear hardworking and
resourceful, particularly in their careers, their primary
motivation is the pursuit of power, prestige, and
personal ambition.
Moving toward others and moving against others are,
in many ways, polar opposites.
MOVING AWAY FROM PEOPLE
To resolve the fundamental conflict of isolation, some
individuals adopt a detached approach and develop a
neurotic pattern of moving away from others. This
behaviour reflects a desire for privacy, independence,
and self-sufficiency.
For many neurotics, interacting with others feels
overwhelming, so they are driven to withdraw in order
to gain autonomy and separation. They often create a
private world, refusing to let anyone get too close.
They place a high value on freedom and self-
sufficiency, which may make them seem aloof or
unapproachable. Even within marriage, they maintain
emotional distance from their spouse. They avoid social
obligations, yet their greatest fear is relying on others .
While all neurotics seek a sense of superiority, those
who withdraw from others have an especially strong
need to appear strong and powerful.
THANKYOU…