CHAPTER 6:Psychoanalytic Social Theory

• Psychoanalytic Social Theory

  • Horney’s theory of personality that emphasizes cultural influence in shaping both normal and neurotic development.
• 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: (1) moving toward people, (2) moving against people, or (3) moving away from people
• Bernard Paris (1994) wrote that “Horney’s insights were derived from her efforts to relieve her own pain, as well as that of her patients. If her suffering had been less intense, her insights would have been less profound” 
• Self Analysis

  • Horney,  beginning with her diaries from age 13 to 26, continuing with her analysis by Karl Abraham, and culminating with her book Self-Analysis.
• Karen Horney was the only daughter of Berndt Danielsen, a sea captain, and Clothilda Danielsen, a woman nearly 18 years younger than her husband.
• Karen felt great hostility toward her stern, devoutly religious father and regarded him as a religious hypocrite.
• Karen resented the favored treatment given to her older brother, and in addition, she worried about the bitterness and discord between her parents.
• In 1906, she entered the University of Freiburg, becoming one of the first women in Germany to study medicine. There she met Oskar Horney, a political science student. Their relationship began as a friendship, but it eventually became a romantic one.
• Early in 1910, she began an analysis with Karl Abraham, one of Freud’s close associates and a man who later analyzed Melanie Klein.
• In 1932, Horney left Germany for the position of an associate director in the newly established Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. 
• While in New York, Karen became a member of the Zodiac group that included Fromm, Fromm Reichmann, and others.
•  In 1941, she resigned from the institute over issues of dogma and orthodoxy and helped form a rival organization—the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (AAP). 
• Karen stated that “Man is ruled not by the pleasure principle alone but by two guiding principles: safety and satisfaction”
• Similarly, 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”. This wilderness is created by society and not by instincts or anatomy.
• In general terms, Karen held that Freud’s explanations result in a pessimistic concept of humanity based on innate instincts and the stagnation of personality. In contrast, her view of humanity is an optimistic one and is centered on cultural forces that are amenable to change.
• Modern culture, she (Karen) contended, is based on competition among individuals. 
• 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.
• Genuine love, of course, can be a healthy, growth-producing experience; but the desperate need for love (such as that shown by Horney herself) provides a fertile ground for the development of neuroses. 
• Rather than benefiting from the need for love, neurotics strive in pathological ways to find it.
• 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.
• Conditions must include a warm and loving environment yet one that is not overly permissive. Children need to experience both genuine love and healthy discipline.
• Such conditions provide them with feelings of safety and satisfaction and permit them to grow in accordance with their real self.
• 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.
• Basic Hostility

  • Repressed feelings of rage that originate during childhood when children fear that their parents will not satisfy their needs for safety and satisfaction.
• Repressed hostility then leads to profound feelings of insecurity and a vague sense of apprehension. 
• Basic Anxiety

  • Feelings of isolation and helplessness in a potentially hostile world.
• Horney believed that basic hostility and basic anxiety are “inextricably interwoven.”
• In this case, basic hostility leads to severe anxiety, but anxiety and fear can also lead to strong feelings of hostility. 
• The important point is that their reciprocal influence may intensify a neurosis without a person experiencing any additional outside conflict.
• Four general ways that people protect themselves against this feeling of being alone in a potentially hostile world: (1) affection (2) submissiveness (3) Power / Prestige / Possession (4) Withdrawal 
• Affection

  • a strategy that does not always lead to authentic love. In their search for affection, some people may try to purchase love with self-effacing compliance, material goods, or sexual favors.
• Submissiveness

  • Neurotics may submit themselves either to people or to institutions such as an organization or a religion. Neurotics who submit to another person often do so in order to gain affection.
• Power

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

  • is a protection against humiliation and is expressed as a tendency to humiliate others
• Possession

  • acts as a buffer against destitution and poverty and manifests itself as a tendency to deprive others.
• Neurotics frequently protect themselves against basic anxiety either by developing an independence from others or by becoming emotionally detached from them.
• Withdrawal

  • neurotics feel that they cannot be hurt by other people.
• Compulsion then  is the salient characteristic of all neurotic drives.