PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIAL THEORY

• Psychoanalytic social theory


  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
  • Suffer from basic anxiety
• Fundamental styles of relating to others

  • Moving toward people
  • Moving against people
  • Moving away from people
• Neurotic


  Relies on only one of the fundamental styles of relating to others, which generates a basic intrapsychic conflict
• Forms of intrapsychic conflict

  • Idealized self-image (neurotic search for glory, neurotic claims, or neurotic pride)
  • Self-hatred (self-contempt or alienation from the self)
• Contrast to Freud


  • Horney insisted that it is social forces rather than biological that are paramount in personality development
  • Horney views humanity in an optimistic light and is centered on cultural forces that are amenable to change, in contrast to Freud's pessimistic concept of humanity based on innate instincts and the stagnation of personality

  
• Impact of culture


  • Culture, especially early childhood experiences, plays a leading role in shaping human personality, either neurotic or healthy
  • Modern culture is based on competition among individuals
  • Competitiveness and the basic hostility it spawns result in feelings of isolation
  • Intense feelings of isolation lead to needs for affection, which can cause people to overvalue love
  • The desperate need for love results in low self-esteem, increased hostility, basic anxiety, more competitiveness, and a continuous excessive need for love and affection
• Cultural teachings of kinship and humility clash with the prevailing attitude of aggressiveness and the desire to win or be superior
• Society's demands for success and achievement are never-ending, leading to a constant pursuit of new goals even after material ambitions are fulfilled
• Western society promotes the idea of freedom and the ability to achieve anything through hard work, but in reality, freedom is limited by genetics, social status, and competition from others
• Childhood experiences


  • Lack of genuine warmth and affection may leave impressions on a child's future development
  • Difficult childhood is primarily responsible for neurotic needs
  • Neurotic needs become powerful because they are the child's only means of gaining feelings of safety
  • The totality of early relationships molds personality development
• Basic hostility


  Develops when parents do not satisfy children's needs
• Basic anxiety


  • Results from child's repressed hostility
  • Profound feelings of insecurity and a vague sense of apprehension
  • A feeling of being isolated and helpless in a world conceived as potentially hostile
• Basic anxiety and basic hostility are inextricably interwoven
• Defenses against basic anxiety

  • Affection (a strategy that does not always lead to authentic love)
  • Submissiveness (neurotics who submit to another person often do so in order to gain affection)
  • Striving for power, prestige and possession (a defense against the real or imagined hostility of others)
  • Withdrawal (developing an independence from others or by becoming emotionally detached from them)
• Compulsive drives


  • Neurotic individuals face similar challenges to normal people, but they experience them more intensely
  • Both use protective strategies against rejection and hostility, but while normal individuals adapt their defenses, neurotics repetitively employ unproductive methods due to compulsive needs to reduce anxiety
• Neurotic needs


  Characterise neurotics in their attempts to combat basic anxiety. A person may employ more than one.
• 10 categories of neurotic needs

  • Need for affection and approval
  • Need for a powerful partner
  • Need to strict one's life within narrow borders
  • Need for power
  • Need to exploit others
  • Need for social prestige and recognition
  • Need for personal admiration
  • Need for ambition and personal achievement
  • Need for self-sufficiency and independence
  • Need for perfection and unassailability
• Neurotic trends


  • Moving toward people
  • Moving against people
  • Moving away from people
• Horney used the term basic conflict because very young children are driven in all three directions—toward, against, and away from people
• Moving toward people


  Does not mean moving toward them in the spirit of genuine love, but to a neurotic need to protect oneself against feelings of helplessness
• Moving against people


  Aggressive people take for granted that everyone is hostile and move against others by appearing tough or ruthless
• Moving away from people

  An expression of needs for privacy, independence, and self-sufficiency
• Idealized self-image


  An attempt to solve conflicts by painting a godlike picture of oneself
• Self-hatred


  An interrelated yet equally irrational and powerful tendency to despise one's real self
• Aspects of the idealized image

  • The neurotic search for glory
  • Neurotic claims
  • Neurotic pride
• Neurotic search for glory


  The comprehensive drive toward actualizing the ideal self, including the need for perfection, the tyranny of the should, neurotic ambition, and the drive toward vindictive triumph
• Neurotic claims


  Neurotics build a fantasy world and believe they are special and entitled to be treated in accordance with their idealized view of themselves
• Neurotic pride


  A false pride based not on a realistic view of the true self but on a spurious image of the idealized self