KAREN HORNEY

• Feminine psychology


  An approach to psychology that focuses on issues concerning gender, female human identity, and issues that women face throughout their lives specially social, economic, political issues
• Karen Horney


  • Well ahead of her time
  • Changed the way psychology looked at gender differences
  • Countered Freud's concept of penis envy with what she called womb envy
• Womb envy


  Man's envy of woman's ability to bear children. Men compensate for this inability by striving for achievements and success in other realms
• Horney disagreed with Freud's belief that males and females were born with inherent differences in their personalities
• Horney's view


  Men and women were equal outside of the cultural restrictions often placed on being female
• Neurosis

  A maladaptive and counterproductive way of dealing with relationships. Neurotic people are unhappy and desperately seek out relationships in order to feel good about themselves
• Three ways of dealing with the world formed by an upbringing in a neurotic family

  • Moving towards people
  • Moving against people
  • Moving away from people
• Neuroticism


  A tendency to anxiety that particularly affects neurotic, typically to the point of having a significant negative impacts on their lives
• 10 neurotic needs

  • Affection and approval
  • A dominant partner
  • Power
  • Exploitation
  • Prestige
  • Admiration
  • Achievement or ambition
  • Self-sufficiency
  • Perfection
  • Narrow limits to life
• Moving towards people


  Recognizes others as potential resources who can support us and help reduce our anxiety
• Affection and approval


  We want other people to love and approve of us. When they do so, they externally affirm our sense of identity
• A partner


  A person with whom you can share your problems. In a neurotic relationship the partner may be seen as a person who will also solve all problems, maybe even saving the neurotic person from their issues or themselves
• Moving against people


  While seeking approval and help from others, the neurotic person also may seek to control them and reduce the threat and model of normality that others represent
• Power


  The ability to dominate others, to impose one's will. Having power gives a sense of control and the feeling of omnipotence
• Exploitation


  Concerned first and last for themselves, neurotic people have little respect for others and will callously use the power they have to exploit other people to their own ends, even taking
• Social recognition


  We all enjoy the boost to our sense of identity when we are recognized by others
• Personal admiration


  We all seek the esteem of others as another boost to our sense of identity. The neurotic person not only wants recognition or basic esteem, they want to be recognized as being their ideal self, both internally and externally
• Personal achievements


  It is normal to have personal goals and take pleasure when hard work leads to achieving these. The neurotic person seeks not just achievement but superiority to all others
• Moving away from people


  Fearing criticism and the harm that other people may bring, the neurotic person may well pull back from them or hold parts of themself at a safe distance
• Neurotic people are motivated by the gap between idealized image they think they should be and the reality and fear that they are far less than perfect. This creates deep anxieties about imperfection and an obsessive drive for perfection
• Feeling threatened and undeserving, the neurotic person will be content with relatively little, restricting their own ambitions and material
• The real self is who we actually are, including our strengths and weaknesses.
• The idealized self is the image we have of ourselves that we would like to be.
• Horney believed that people strive towards an idealized self but often fall short due to internal conflicts or external pressures.