Karen Horney

Cards (25)

  • Culture
    Plays a leading reason in shaping human personality
  • Prevailing attitude
    Of aggressiveness and drive to win or be superior
  • Society demand

    For achievement & Success
  • Culture
    Especially childhood experiences, plays a leading reason in shaping human personality
  • Cultural teachings

    Of love and humility
  • Society demand

    For achievement & Success
  • Society tells people
    Are free & can accomplish anything with hard work and perseverance
  • Every time a goal has been reached, new ones are determined continually
  • Freedom is restricted by genetics, social position, & competitiveness of others
  • Each person begins life with a potential for healthy development, but people need favorable conditions for growth
  • Basic Hostility
    • Happens if parents fail to meet needs for safety and satisfaction
    • Children seldom express rage overtly
    • They repress hostility towards parents and have no awareness of it
    • Instead, they develop into feelings of insecurity and sense of apprehension
  • Basic Anxiety
    • Feeling of being isolated and helpless in a world that is potentially hostile
    • Feeling of being small, insignificant, helpless, deserted, endangered, in a world that is out to abuse, cheat attack, humiliate, betray, and envy
  • Basic Anxiety can grow from basic humility but can also produce feelings of hostility
  • Defense Mechanisms: Protection against Basic Anxiety
    • Affection - some lead to authentic love, some to superficial love
    • Submissiveness - submit to other people or to institutions such as organizations or religion
    • Power, Prestige, and Possession - Power: defense against hostility / tend to dominate others, Prestige: defense against humiliation / tend to humiliate, Possession: defense against poverty / tend to deprive
    • Withdrawal - some develop independence; some become emotionally detached from others
  • Compulsive Drives
    Neurotic trends and neurotic needs
  • Moving Toward People
    • The compliant personality
    • Basic Conflict: feeling of helplessness
    • Desperate striving for affection and approval
    • Seeking a powerful partner who will take responsibility for their lives
  • Moving Against People
    • The aggressive personality
    • Basic Conflict: Protection against hostile world
    • Exploiting and using others for own benefit
    • Seeking for power, prestige, and personal ambition
    • Driven by Hyper Competitiveness - exaggerated neurotic need to move against others
  • Moving Away From People
    • The detached personality
    • Basic Conflict: Feelings of Isolation
    • Fear of needing and associating with others
    • Putting emotional distance and expressing need for privacy and self-sufficiency
  • Intense need to be strong and powerful with self belief of perfection and hidden greatness is an attempt to combat Basic Anxiety
  • Basic Anxiety
    Feeling of being isolated and helpless in a world conceived as hostile
  • Defenses which are more specific especially with neurotic individuals overlap and a single person may have more than one
  • Neurotic Needs
    • Moving Towards: Affection and Approval, Powerful Partner, Narrow limits to life
    • Moving Against: Power, Exploitation, Recognition and Prestige, Personal Admiration, Personal Achievement
    • Moving Away: Self-Sufficiency and Independence, Perfection and Unassailability
  • Feminine Psychology
    • Differences among men and women are not a result of anatomy but of social and cultural expectations
    • Recognized the existence of Oedipus Complex, but insisted it was due to environmental conditions
    • Denied Penis Envy - there is no anatomical reason why girls should be envious of penis and boys should desire womb
    • Agreed with Adler's Masculine Protest - there is a wish for qualities or privileges which are culturally accepted as masculine
    • Each sex has qualities/ attributes that the other admires
    • Believed in the change and development of personality across the lifespan
  • Psychosocial Theory
    Ego emerges from and is largely shaped by culture
  • Epigenetic Principle
    The ego grows as our organs do; developing sequentially, with certain changes arising at a particular time and with more recent developments built upon previous structures