CH7: Karen Horney's Psychoanalytic Social

• Competitiveness and the basic hostility it spawns result in feelings of isolation.
• Horney hypothesized that a difficult childhood is primarily responsible for neurotic needs.

  • Lack of genuine warmth and affection from parents results in various traumatic events, such as sexual abuse, beatings, open rejection, or pervasive neglect, that leave impressions on a child’s future development
• Children need to experience both genuine love and healthy discipline. Such conditions provide them with feelings of safety and satisfaction
• The child develops feelings of basic hostility toward the parents. Repressed hostility leads to basic anxiety―profound feelings of insecurity and a vague sense of apprehension.
• Protective Devices. 1. Affection: Purchase love with self-effacing compliance, material goods, or sexual favors
• 2. Submissiveness: Submit oneself either to people or institutions
• 3. Strive for power (to dominate others), prestige (to humiliate others), and possession (to deprive others)
• 4. Withdrawal: Independence or emotional detachment from others
• Compulsion is the salient characteristic of all neurotic drives
• Toward people - compulsive personality, neurotic: helplessness. normal: friendly loving
• Against people - aggressive personality, neurotic: hostility, exploitation and power. normal: abiltity to survive in a competent environment
• Away from people - detached personality, neurotic: isolation. normal: autonomous and serene
• I.C. 1. Idealized self-image: An attempt to solve conflicts by painting a godlike picture of oneself
• I.C 1 -

  1. Neurotic Search for Glory: Comprehensive drive toward actualizing the ideal self.

  • Need for perfection: “Tyranny of the should”
  • b) Neurotic ambition: Compulsive drive toward superiority
  • c) Drive toward vindictive triumph: To put others to shame and defeat through one’s success
  • 2. Neurotic Claims: False sense of entitlement
  • 3.Neurotic Pride: False pride
• 2. Self-Hatred occurs when neurotics realize that their real self does not match the insatiable demands of their idealized se