The more his irrational imagination comes into its own, the more likely it is that he must already simply be afraid of everything real, certain, concrete or finite. He tends to hate time because it is something definite; money because it is concrete; death, because it is final. But he may also hate the certainty of desires or choices, and therefore avoid certainty in commitments or decisions. To illustrate, here is one patient who cherished the fantasy of becoming a will-o'-the-wisp dancing in a beam of moonlight: she happened to experience a feeling of horror when looking into a mirror - not because she saw any imperfections, but because it made her realize that she had it has certain contours, it is substantial, "pinned to a specific body." The mirror made her feel like a bird whose wings were nailed to a board. And when such feelings rose into her consciousness, she terribly wanted to break the mirror.
Of course, development does not always reach such extremes. But every neurotic, even if he may pass for a sane person on the surface, hates reconciliation with the obvious when it concerns his special illusions about himself. It cannot be otherwise, because otherwise the illusions will burst. The attitude towards external laws and rules may be different, but he always tends to deny the laws operating within himself, tends to refuse to see causal relationships in the physical world or that one factor follows from another or reinforces it.
There are an infinite number of ways to disregard the obvious, which you don't want to see. He forgets it; "this does not count"; "it is an accident"; "it's because of the circumstances"; "it forced me"; "what could I do here"; "it `s naturally". Like a fraudulent accountant, he goes as far as he likes to keep double counting; but unlike the swindler, he only credits what is in his favor and pretends not to know about the other. I have yet to see a patient whose open rebellion against reality (as expressed in "Harvey": "For twenty years I have struggled with reality and finally overcome it") does not play on the same string. Or, again quoting the patient's classic statement: "If it weren't for reality, I would be all right."
It remains to distinguish more clearly between the pursuit of fame and healthy human aspirations. Outwardly, they are deceptively similar, and so much so that it seems that only their degree differs. It looks as if the neurotic were simply more ambitious, more preoccupied with power, prestige and success, than the healthy person; as if his moral standards were simply higher or tougher than usual; as if he were only more presumptuous, or considered himself more important than people generally think they are. And really, who would dare to draw a definite line and say: "Here health ends and neurosis begins"?
There is a semblance of healthy aspirations and neurotic drives, because they have a common root in the possibilities inherent in any person. Mental abilities allow a person to go beyond the boundaries of himself. Unlike animals, he can imagine and plan. In various ways, he can gradually expand his skills and, as history shows, he really expands them. The same is true for the life of an individual. There are no hard limits to what he can handle in his life, the qualities and skills that he can develop in himself, and his creative abilities. Given these facts, it seems inevitable that a person does not know his limits and, therefore, easily sets himself too small or too high goals. This ignorance is the basis without which, apparently, the pursuit of glory could not begin.
The basic difference between healthy strivings and neurotic desires for fame lies in their motives. Healthy aspirations spring from the innate propensity of man to develop his inherent faculties. Confidence in the inner need for growth has always been a basic principle of our theoretical and therapeutic approach.* And this certitude has only increased with experience. The only thing that seems to me now to be clarified is the wording. Now I would say (repeating what was said on the first pages of the book) that each person is driven to self-realization by the living forces of his true self. * By "our" I mean the approach of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. In the introduction to Our Inner Conflicts, I said: "I am sure that a person can and wants to develop the abilities inherent in him." See also Dr. Kurt Goldstein, Human Nature, Harvard University Press, 1940. Goldstein, however, does not make a distinction - a key distinction - between self-fulfillment, that is, the realization of the true self, and the embodiment of the ideal self.
On the contrary, the pursuit of fame arises from the need to embody the ideal self. This difference is fundamental, because all others flow from it. Since self-idealization is a neurotic decision, and as such is compulsive in nature, all the drives that result from it are also necessarily compulsive. Because the neurotic, while he is forced to hold on to his illusions about himself, is unable to recognize his limitations, the pursuit of fame goes into the unlimited. Since his main goal is to achieve fame, he ceases to be interested in the process of learning, doing or advancing step by step; in fact, he tends to despise it. He doesn't want to climb the mountain, he wants to be on top right away. Consequently, he loses the idea of what evolution or growth means, even if he speculates about them. And finally, since the creation of the ideal self is possible only at the expense of the truth about oneself, and its embodiment in reality requires further distortion of this truth, the imagination willingly comes to the rescue. Thus, to a greater or lesser extent, but along the way, he loses interest in truth and the ability to distinguish truth from untruth - and this loss, among others, is also responsible for his difficulty in distinguishing between sincere feelings, beliefs, aspirations and their artificial equivalents. (unconscious claims) in oneself and in others. The emphasis shifts from "to be" to "to seem".
So, the difference between healthy aspirations and neurotic attraction to fame is the difference between spontaneity and compulsiveness; between recognition and denial of limitations; between focusing on a glorious final product and a sense of evolution; between appearance and essence; fantasy and truth. The distinction thus established is not identical with that between a relatively healthy and a neurotic individual. The first may not be sincerely involved in self-fulfillment, just as the second may not be fully attracted to the embodiment of the ideal self. The tendency towards self-fulfillment also operates in the neurotic; we could not provide therapeutic assistance to the development of the patient if there were not such a desire in him to begin with. But while the difference between a healthy and a neurotic person in this respect is merely a difference of degree, the difference between true craving and compulsive drives, despite their superficial resemblance, is qualitative, not quantitative. * * When I say "neurotic" in this book I mean a man in whom neurotic impulses have taken precedence over healthy impulses.
It seems to me that the most appropriate symbol for the neurotic process initiated by the pursuit of fame is the ideological content of the story of the deal with the devil. The devil, or other personified evil, tempts a person who is entangled in the spiritual or material plane with an offer of unlimited power. But he can get this power by selling his soul or going to hell. Such a temptation can arise for everyone, spiritually rich or poor, because it appeals to two powerful passions - the desire for the infinite and the desire to find an easy way out of the situation. According to religious tradition, the greatest spiritual leaders of mankind, Buddha and Christ, experienced such temptation. But because they were firmly rooted in themselves, they recognized this as a temptation and were able to reject it. Moreover, the terms of the deal are quite in line with the price to be paid in neurotic development. In symbolic terms, the easy path to infinite glory inevitably turns out to be the path to the inner hell of self-contempt and self-torture. Choosing this path, a person actually loses his soul - his true self.
NEUROTIC REQUIREMENTS
In his pursuit of fame, the neurotic rushes into the realm of the fantastic, the infinite, the unlimited. Outwardly, he leads a "normal" life - as a member of the family and society, who goes to work and entertains on weekends. But without realizing it, or at least not understanding to what extent it comes, he lives in two worlds - in the world of his secret private life and in the world of official life. These two lives do not fit together, as one patient said: "Life is terrible - there is so much reality in it."
It doesn't matter how strong the neurotic's aversion to being confronted with the obvious. Reality inevitably imposes itself in two ways. Even if he is a highly gifted person, in all essentials he is like each of us - with common human limitations and significant individual difficulties. His present existence is at odds with his god-like self-image. Reality outside of him also does not treat him as a deity. And for him, an hour has only sixty minutes, he has to stand in line, like everyone else, a taxi driver or a boss at work treats him like a mere mortal.
The humiliation to which (according to him) the neurotic is subjected is very aptly illustrated by a small incident in the childhood of one patient. She was three years old, she was dreaming about how she would become a fairy-tale queen, and suddenly her uncle picked her up from the floor, jokingly saying, "Who has a muzzle so smeared?" She could never forget her furious and powerless anger. Thus, the personalities of this warehouse are almost constantly faced with inconsistencies, dumbfounded and offensive. How to be here? How to explain them, how to respond to them, or how to try to brush them aside? As long as self-aggrandizement is too necessary for the neurotic and therefore inviolable, he cannot help but conclude that something is wrong with the world around him. The world must change. So, instead of dealing with his illusions, he makes demands on the outside world. Other people and fate must treat him according to his inflated idea of his own importance. Everyone and everyone is obliged to adapt to his illusions. Otherwise it's unfair. He deserves a better share.
The neurotic believes that he has the right to special attention, delicacy, respect. The requirements of honor are quite understandable and even sometimes obvious to others. But they are only a part, the tip of a more comprehensive requirement. All his needs arising from his prohibitions, fears, conflicts and decisions must be satisfied or properly respected. Furthermore. Whatever he feels, thinks or does must have no harmful consequences. This actually means that the laws of psychology do not apply to him. Therefore, he does not need to acknowledge (or to some extent solve) his problems. It's none of his business to deal with his own problems; it is the business of others to see to it that he is not disturbed by his problems.
The last and most famous book of an outstanding psychoanalyst is devoted to the study of internal problems and personality conflicts. Summarizing his many years of clinical experience, the author formulates ideas about neurosis as a specific version of adaptation, competing with the spiritual development of the individual.
The book is available not only to professionals, but also to a wide range of readers who can not only recognize themselves in them and see their own problems, but also ways to overcome them.
Introduction
The neurotic process is a special form of human development, extremely unfortunate because of the waste of creative energy to which it condemns a person. It is not only qualitatively different from healthy maturation and growth, but also the exact opposite of it in many ways, and to a much greater extent than we think. Under favorable conditions, the energy of people goes to the realization of their own potential, that is, to the embodiment in reality of the totality of the possibilities that are potentially inherent in them. This development is far from uniform. In accordance with his special temperament, abilities, predilections, conditions of childhood and later life, a person can become softer or tougher, more cautious or trusting, confident or not too self-confident, contemplative or sociable, he can show his special talents. But in whatever direction he goes, he will develop his own inclinations, which are inherent in him.
However, under the influence of internal compulsion, a person can begin to alienate himself from what is really characteristic of him. And then the main part of his strength and energy is shifted to perform another task: turning himself into absolute perfection through a rigid system of internal prescriptions. Nothing less than godlike perfection satisfies his ideal self-image, and satisfies his pride in those sublime virtues which (he thinks) he possesses, could possess, or ought to possess.
This style of neurotic development, detailed below, gives us something more than a purely clinical and theoretical interest in pathological phenomena. Here we are confronted with a fundamental problem of morality, namely: with the problem of the morality of the human passion for striving for perfection, with the problem of the morality of religious duty, commanding to achieve perfection. No serious student of human development will doubt the undesirability of pride or conceit, or the undesirability of pride-motivated pursuits of excellence. But there is a wide range of opinions about the desirability or necessity of a system of disciplinary internal control in order to guarantee the morality of human behavior. Even accepting that these internal rules are capable of crushing our immediacy, shouldn't we, in accordance with the testament of Christianity ("Be perfect ..."), strive for perfection? Wouldn't an attempt to do without such rules be risky, actually destructive for moral and social life?
This is not the place to discuss all the many ways in which this question has been posed and answered throughout the history of mankind, and I am not ready for such a discussion. I wish only to point out that one of the essential factors on which the answer depends is the nature of our belief in the nature of man.
Generally speaking, there are three main concepts of the purpose of morality, based on different interpretations of the essence of human nature. Imposed prohibitions and restrictions cannot be abandoned by those who believe (whatever words they call it) that man is by nature sinful or driven by primitive instincts (Freud). The goal of morality then becomes the taming or overcoming of the status naturae (natural state) of man, and not his development.
The goal of morality becomes different for those who believe that man is by nature both “good” and at the same time “bad” (sinful or destructive). Then the core of morality becomes a safety net for the ultimate victory of innate goodness, purified, directed or strengthened by such elements as faith, reason, will or grace - in accordance with the characteristics of the dominant religious or ethical concept. Here the emphasis is not solely on the victory over evil or on the suppression of evil, since there is also a positive program. However, it relies either on some supernatural help, or on a strong ideal of reason or will, which in itself implies the application of forbidding and restraining internal prescriptions.
And, finally, the problem of morality appears completely different when we consider that the constructive forces of development and evolution are innate in a person, and it is they that induce a person to realize the possibilities inherent in him. This does not mean that man is fundamentally good and good, since the contrary would imply a pre-given knowledge of good and evil. This means that a person by nature voluntarily strives for self-fulfillment, and his value system grows out of this desire. It is clear that he cannot reach his human potential if he does not believe in himself, is not active and productive, if he does not build relationships with people in a spirit of reciprocity, if he surrenders, in Shelley's words, "worship of the dark idol of the Self" ("dark idolatry of self") and constantly attributes his shortcomings to the imperfections of those around him. He can grow up, in the true sense of the word, only by making himself responsible for it.
Thus, when the criterion for choosing what we cultivate in ourselves or eradicate is the question of whether this attitude or attraction of mine hinders or promotes my human growth, we come to the idea of the morality of evolution. As the frequency of neuroses shows, any kind of coercion can easily divert constructive energy into unconstructive or even destructive channels. But with faith in the autonomous striving for self-fulfillment, we do not need an internal straitjacket for our immediacy, nor a whip of internal prescriptions to drive us to perfection. Undoubtedly, such disciplinary methods can be of great help in suppressing undesirable factors; but there is also no doubt that they harm our growth. We don't need them because we see the best way to overcome destructive inner forces, and that is to outgrow them. The path to this goal lies through increasing awareness and understanding of oneself. Consequently, self-knowledge in this case is not an end in itself, but serves as a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth of the personality.
In this sense, work on oneself becomes not only the primary moral obligation, but at the same time (in a very real sense) the primary moral privilege. The transformation we seek depends on our willingness to work on ourselves and happens only as much as we take our growth seriously. As we lose our neurotic self-obsession, we gain the freedom to grow, free to love and care for others. We want to provide them with the opportunity to grow unfettered while they are young, and to help them find and fulfill themselves in every possible way when they are blocked in their development. The ideal in relation to oneself or to another becomes the liberation and cultivation of the forces leading to self-fulfillment.
It is my hope that this book will also contribute to such liberation by clearly pointing out the factors preventing it.
Karen Horney
Translation by E.I.Zamfir
K.Horney. Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self–Realization. N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., 1950
St. Petersburg: East European Institute of Psychoanalysis and BSC, 1997
Terminological correction by V. Danchenko
K.: PSYLIB, 2006
Preface to the Russian edition (B.Peris)
Karen Horney (1885-1952) is one of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers of the twentieth century. Trained in medicine at the Universities of Freiburg, Göttingen and Berlin, she began her personal analysis with Carl Abraham in 1910 and in 1920 became one of the founders of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. In the twenties and early thirties, she tried to modify Sigmund Freud's theory of female psychology, while still remaining within the framework of orthodox theory. Her work was too ahead of its time to receive the attention it deserved, but since its re-publication (1967) as a collection under the general title of Women's Psychology, Horney has been considered a seminal figure in feminist psychoanalysis.
In 1932, Horney accepted an invitation from Franz Alexander to become the second director of the newly established Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, but moved to New York in 1934 to work at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Influenced by new social and intellectual currents in the United States, she published two books, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937) and New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939), which reject some of the fundamental tenets of Freudian theory and replace its biological focus with a cultural and interpersonal. These books so shocked Horney's orthodox colleagues that they forced her to leave the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. In this phase of her research, Horney joined the cultural neo-Freudians of psychoanalysis, such as Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, Clara Thompson, and Abraham Kardiner.
After leaving the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, Horney founded the American Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1941 and continued to develop her theory in a more spiritually close atmosphere. In Introspection (1942), Our Inner Conflicts (1945), and Neurosis and Personal Growth (1950), she postulated that the anxiety engendered by lack of security, love, and acceptance is dealt with by the individual by refusing from his true feelings and invents for himself artificial defense strategies, both intrapsychic and interpersonal.
Horney's ideas went through several stages in their development, and therefore her name means different things to different people. To some, she is seen as a woman whose scientific work brilliantly anticipated all objections to Freud's views on the psychology of women. For others, she is a neo-Freudian belonging to the culturalist school. And some identify it with her mature theory, which is a well-thought-out classification of defense strategies. Every stage of Horney's work is important, but I think that it is her mature theory that represents the most significant contribution to the course of psychoanalytic thought. Much of her early ideas were revised or expanded upon—by Horney herself or by others—or merged into the work of the next generation, and sometimes rediscovered by them. But with her mature theory, things are different. "Our Inner Conflicts" and "Neurosis and Personal Growth" explain a person's behavior within the current constellation of his inner conflicts and defenses. We will not find in other authors anything like this deep, extremely promising interpretation. It gives great opportunities not only to the clinician, but also to the literary critic and culturologist; it can be used in political psychology, philosophy, religion, biography and solving problems of gender identity.
Although each work of Horney is a significant contribution to science, and therefore deserves attention, the main one remains Neurosis and Personal Growth. This book builds on her early work and develops to a large extent the ideas contained therein. Horney is famous for her clarity as an author, and Neurosis and Personal Growth is no exception; but those unfamiliar with the evolution of her ideas may find this introduction useful.
I. Horney and female psychology
While still teaching orthodox theory at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, Horney began to diverge from Freud on penis envy, female masochism, and female development, and attempted to replace the dominant phallocentric view of female psychology with a different, female view. Initially, she tried to change psychoanalysis from the inside, but eventually she moved away from many of its prejudices and created her own theory.
In her first two articles, "On the Origin of the Castration Complex in Women" (1923) and "The Departure from Femininity" (1926), Horney sought to show that the girl and woman possessed only her own biological constitution and developmental patterns, which should be considered on the basis of the feminine. beginning, and not as different from men, and not as products of their supposed inferiority to men. She challenged the psychoanalytic approach to a woman as an inferior man, considering this approach a consequence of the sex of its creator, a man of genius, and the fruit of a culture in which the masculine principle prevailed. The prevailing male views on a woman were assimilated by psychoanalysis as a scientific picture of the essence of a woman. For Horney, it is important to understand why a man sees a woman in this way. She argues that a man's envy of pregnancy, childbearing, motherhood, the female breast and the opportunity to feed on it gives rise to an unconscious tendency to devalue all this, and that the male creative impulse serves to overcompensate for his insignificant role in the process of reproduction. A man's "womb envy" is certainly stronger than a woman's "penis envy" because a man wants to belittle a woman much more than a woman wants to belittle a man.
In later articles, Horney continued her analysis of the male view of woman in order to show the lack of scientific content. In the article “Mistrust Between the Sexes” (1931), she argues that a woman is seen as a “second-class creature”, because “at all times the more powerful party created the ideology necessary to ensure its dominant position”, and “in this ideology, the differences of the weak were interpreted as second rate." In Fear of Woman (1932), Horney traces this male fear back to the boy's fear of his genitals being inadequate to his mother's. A woman threatens a man not with castration, but with humiliation, threatening "masculine self-respect." Growing up, a man continues to worry deep down about the size of his penis and about his potency. This anxiety is not duplicated by any female anxiety: “a woman plays her role by the very fact of her being”, she does not need to constantly prove her feminine essence. Therefore, a woman does not have a narcissistic fear of a man. To cope with his anxiety, a man advances the ideal of productivity, seeks sexual "victories" or seeks to humiliate the object of love.
Horney does not deny that women are often jealous of men and dissatisfied with their female role. Many of her works are devoted to the "masculinity complex", which she defines in "Forbidden Femininity" (1926) as "a complex of feelings and fantasies of a woman, the content of which is determined by the unconscious desire for the advantages that the position of a man gives, envy of men, desire to be a man and refusal to from the role of a woman. Initially, she believed that a woman's masculinity complex was inevitable, since it was necessary in order to avoid the feelings of guilt and anxiety that are a product of the Oedipal situation, but she subsequently revised her opinion. The masculinity complex is a product of cultural male dominance and the characteristics of a girl's family dynamics, Horney argued.
“In real life, a girl is doomed from birth to be convinced of her inferiority, whether it is expressed rudely or subtly. This situation constantly stimulates her masculinity complex” (“Escape from Femininity”).
Speaking of family dynamics, Horney at first considered the relationship of the girl with the men of the family to be the most important, but later the mother becomes the central figure in the case histories of women who suffered from a masculinity complex. In Maternal Conflicts (1933) she enumerates all those traits of the girl's childhood which she considers responsible for the masculinity complex.
“Here’s what is typical: girls, as a rule, had very early reasons not to love their own female world. The reasons for this could be maternal intimidation, deep disappointment in relationships associated with a father or brother, early sexual experience that horrified the girl, favoritism of parents towards a brother.
All this was in the childhood of Karen Horney herself.
In her work on female psychology, Horney gradually moved away from Freud's belief that "anatomy is destiny" and increasingly singled out cultural factors as a source of women's problems and gender-role identification problems. No, a woman does not envy a male penis, but a man's privileges. She really needs to have not a penis, but the opportunity to fulfill herself, developing the human abilities inherent in her. The patriarchal ideal of a woman does not always meet her inner needs, although the power of this ideal often makes a woman...
Current page: 1 (total book has 30 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 17 pages]
Translation by E.I.Zamfir
K.Horney. Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self–Realization. N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., 1950
St. Petersburg: East European Institute of Psychoanalysis and BSC, 1997
Terminological correction by V. Danchenko
K.: PSYLIB, 2006
Preface to the Russian edition (B.Peris)
Karen Horney (1885-1952) is one of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers of the twentieth century. Trained in medicine at the Universities of Freiburg, Göttingen and Berlin, she began her personal analysis with Carl Abraham in 1910 and in 1920 became one of the founders of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. In the twenties and early thirties, she tried to modify Sigmund Freud's theory of female psychology, while still remaining within the framework of orthodox theory. Her work was too ahead of its time to receive the attention it deserved, but since its re-publication (1967) as a collection under the general title of Women's Psychology, Horney has been considered a seminal figure in feminist psychoanalysis.
In 1932, Horney accepted an invitation from Franz Alexander to become the second director of the newly established Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, but moved to New York in 1934 to work at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Influenced by new social and intellectual currents in the United States, she published two books, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937) and New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939), which reject some of the fundamental tenets of Freudian theory and replace its biological focus with a cultural and interpersonal. These books so shocked Horney's orthodox colleagues that they forced her to leave the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. In this phase of her research, Horney joined the cultural neo-Freudians of psychoanalysis, such as Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, Clara Thompson, and Abraham Kardiner.
After leaving the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, Horney founded the American Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1941 and continued to develop her theory in a more spiritually close atmosphere. In Introspection (1942), Our Inner Conflicts (1945), and Neurosis and Personal Growth (1950), she postulated that the anxiety engendered by lack of security, love, and acceptance is dealt with by the individual by refusing from his true feelings and invents for himself artificial defense strategies, both intrapsychic and interpersonal.
Horney's ideas went through several stages in their development, and therefore her name means different things to different people. To some, she is seen as a woman whose scientific work brilliantly anticipated all objections to Freud's views on the psychology of women. For others, she is a neo-Freudian belonging to the culturalist school. And some identify it with her mature theory, which is a well-thought-out classification of defense strategies. Every stage of Horney's work is important, but I think that it is her mature theory that represents the most significant contribution to the course of psychoanalytic thought. Much of her early ideas were revised or expanded upon—by Horney herself or by others—or merged into the work of the next generation, and sometimes rediscovered by them. But with her mature theory, things are different. "Our Inner Conflicts" and "Neurosis and Personal Growth" explain a person's behavior within the current constellation of his inner conflicts and defenses. We will not find in other authors anything like this deep, extremely promising interpretation. It gives great opportunities not only to the clinician, but also to the literary critic and culturologist; it can be used in political psychology, philosophy, religion, biography and solving problems of gender identity.
Although each work of Horney is a significant contribution to science, and therefore deserves attention, the main one remains Neurosis and Personal Growth. This book builds on her early work and develops to a large extent the ideas contained therein. Horney is famous for her clarity as an author, and Neurosis and Personal Growth is no exception; but those unfamiliar with the evolution of her ideas may find this introduction useful.
I. Horney and female psychology
While still teaching orthodox theory at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, Horney began to diverge from Freud on penis envy, female masochism, and female development, and attempted to replace the dominant phallocentric view of female psychology with a different, female view. Initially, she tried to change psychoanalysis from the inside, but eventually she moved away from many of its prejudices and created her own theory.
In her first two articles, "On the Origin of the Castration Complex in Women" (1923) and "The Departure from Femininity" (1926), Horney sought to show that the girl and woman possessed only her own biological constitution and developmental patterns, which should be considered on the basis of the feminine. beginning, and not as different from men, and not as products of their supposed inferiority to men. She challenged the psychoanalytic approach to a woman as an inferior man, considering this approach a consequence of the sex of its creator, a man of genius, and the fruit of a culture in which the masculine principle prevailed. The prevailing male views on a woman were assimilated by psychoanalysis as a scientific picture of the essence of a woman. For Horney, it is important to understand why a man sees a woman in this way. She argues that a man's envy of pregnancy, childbearing, motherhood, the female breast and the opportunity to feed on it gives rise to an unconscious tendency to devalue all this, and that the male creative impulse serves to overcompensate for his insignificant role in the process of reproduction. A man's "womb envy" is certainly stronger than a woman's "penis envy" because a man wants to belittle a woman much more than a woman wants to belittle a man.
In later articles, Horney continued her analysis of the male view of woman in order to show the lack of scientific content. In the article “Mistrust Between the Sexes” (1931), she argues that a woman is seen as a “second-class creature”, because “at all times the more powerful party created the ideology necessary to ensure its dominant position”, and “in this ideology, the differences of the weak were interpreted as second rate." In Fear of Woman (1932), Horney traces this male fear back to the boy's fear of his genitals being inadequate to his mother's. A woman threatens a man not with castration, but with humiliation, threatening "masculine self-respect." Growing up, a man continues to worry deep down about the size of his penis and about his potency. This anxiety is not duplicated by any female anxiety: “a woman plays her role by the very fact of her being”, she does not need to constantly prove her feminine essence. Therefore, a woman does not have a narcissistic fear of a man. To cope with his anxiety, a man advances the ideal of productivity, seeks sexual "victories" or seeks to humiliate the object of love.
Horney does not deny that women are often jealous of men and dissatisfied with their female role. Many of her works are devoted to the "masculinity complex", which she defines in "Forbidden Femininity" (1926) as "a complex of feelings and fantasies of a woman, the content of which is determined by the unconscious desire for the advantages that the position of a man gives, envy of men, desire to be a man and refusal to from the role of a woman. Initially, she believed that a woman's masculinity complex was inevitable, since it was necessary in order to avoid the feelings of guilt and anxiety that are a product of the Oedipal situation, but she subsequently revised her opinion. The masculinity complex is a product of cultural male dominance and the characteristics of a girl's family dynamics, Horney argued.
“In real life, a girl is doomed from birth to be convinced of her inferiority, whether it is expressed rudely or subtly. This situation constantly stimulates her masculinity complex” (“Escape from Femininity”).
Speaking of family dynamics, Horney at first considered the relationship of the girl with the men of the family to be the most important, but later the mother becomes the central figure in the case histories of women who suffered from a masculinity complex. In Maternal Conflicts (1933) she enumerates all those traits of the girl's childhood which she considers responsible for the masculinity complex.
“Here’s what is typical: girls, as a rule, had very early reasons not to love their own female world. The reasons for this could be maternal intimidation, deep disappointment in relationships associated with a father or brother, early sexual experience that horrified the girl, favoritism of parents towards a brother.
All this was in the childhood of Karen Horney herself.
In her work on female psychology, Horney gradually moved away from Freud's belief that "anatomy is destiny" and increasingly singled out cultural factors as a source of women's problems and gender-role identification problems. No, a woman does not envy a male penis, but a man's privileges. She really needs to have not a penis, but the opportunity to fulfill herself, developing the human abilities inherent in her. The patriarchal ideal of a woman does not always meet her inner needs, although the power of this ideal often forces a woman to behave in accordance with it. In The Problem of Female Masochism, Horney challenges the theory of "the ancestral kinship between masochism and the female organism". This belief of some psychoanalysts merely reflects the stereotypes of a masculine culture, while Horney traces a number of social conditions that make a woman more masochistic than a man. Moreover, a comparison of different cultures shows that these conditions are not universal: some cultures are more unfavorable for a woman's development than others.
Although Horney devoted most of her professional life to the problems of female psychology, she left this topic in 1935, believing that the role of culture in shaping the psyche of a woman is too great for us to make a clear distinction: this is female, and this is not. In a lecture entitled "Woman's Fear of Action" (1935), Horney argues that we will only be able to understand what the psychological difference between woman and man really is when a woman is freed from the concept of femininity imposed by masculine culture. Our goal should not be to define the true essence of femininity, but to encourage "the full and comprehensive development of the personality of each person." After that, she began to develop her theory, which she considered to be gender-neutral, applicable to both men and women.
II. Break with Freud
Horney published two books in the thirties. The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937) and New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939), which led the psychoanalytic community to "excommunicate" her from psychoanalysis. In both books she criticized Freud's theory and advanced her own.
One of the main features of Horney's work at that time was the emphasis on the role of culture in the formation of neurotic conflicts and defenses; the importance of culture was increasingly emphasized by her already in works devoted to female psychology. Moving to the US and realizing that country was different from central Europe made her even more receptive to the work of sociologists, anthropologists, and culturally oriented psychoanalysts such as Erich Fromm, Herold Lasswell, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Alfred Adler, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Horney showed that Freud, due to his special interest in the biological roots of human behavior, made a not entirely correct assumption about the universality of feelings, attitudes and attitudes inherent in his culture. Ignoring social factors, he links the neurotic's egocentrism with narcissistic libido, his hostility with the instinct of destruction, his obsession with money with anal libido, and acquisitiveness with oral libido. But anthropology shows that each culture has its own, distinct from other cultures, tendencies to produce all these character types. Following Malinowski and others, Horney sees the Oedipus complex as a culturally determined phenomenon that can be greatly reduced through social change.
Freud considers neurosis to be derived from the clash of culture and instinct, but Horney disagrees. According to Freud, we need culture to survive, and in order to maintain it, we must suppress or sublimate our instincts. And since our happiness consists in the full and immediate satisfaction of instincts, we must choose between happiness and survival. Horney does not believe that this clash between the individual and society is inevitable. A clash occurs when an unfavorable environment frustrates our emotional needs and thereby arouses fear and hostility. Freud portrays man as insatiable, destructive and anti-social, but according to Horney, all these are neurotic reactions to adverse conditions rather than an expression of instincts.
Although Horney is often considered a representative of the cultural school, the focus on culture was only a passing phase of her work. A more important part of her work in the thirties was a new version of the structure of neurosis, first presented by her in The Neurotic Personality of Our Time. Horney did not deny the importance of childhood in the emotional development of a person, as is sometimes thought, but she attached importance not to the frustration of libidinal impulses, but to the pathogenic conditions of the child's life in a family where he does not feel safe, loved and valued. As a result, he develops "basal anxiety" - a feeling of helplessness in the face of a hostile world, which he tries to alleviate by developing such defensive strategies as the pursuit of love, the desire for power or alienation. Since these strategies are incompatible with each other, they come into conflict, which creates new difficulties. In her subsequent books, Horney developed and refined this model of neurosis.
Horney believed that our defense strategies are doomed to failure because they create a vicious circle: the means by which we want to alleviate anxiety, on the contrary, increases it. For example, the frustration of the need for love makes this need insatiable, and the exactingness and jealousy that flow from insatiability make it increasingly less likely that a person will find a friend. Those who have not been loved develop a strong feeling that no one loves them, and they discard any evidence to the contrary, and look for bad intentions behind any manifestation of sympathy. Being deprived of love has made them dependent, but they are afraid to depend on another because it makes them too vulnerable. Horney compares this situation to that of "a person who is starving but dares not eat anything for fear that the food is poisoned".
Horney devoted most of The Neurotic Personality to an analysis of the neurotic need for love, but she dwells in this work on the desire for power, prestige and possession, which develops when a person despairs of finding love. These neurotic strivings are the product of anxiety, anger, and feelings of inferiority. They are insatiable, because no amount of success will be enough for a neurotic to feel safe, calm, or satisfied with his achievements. The need for love or success is fruitful and can be satisfied if it is not compulsive.
According to Horney, people try to cope with basic anxiety by developing not one but several defense strategies.
“A person feels at the same time an imperative attraction to rule over everyone and be loved by everyone, he is attracted to give in to everyone and everyone to impose his will, to get away from people and beg them for friendship.” As a result, "he is torn apart by irresolvable conflicts, which are often the dynamic center of a neurosis."
So, in the early books of Horney, a paradigm of the structure of neuroses developed, according to which disturbances in human relationships generate basal anxiety, which leads to the development of defense strategies that, firstly, nullify themselves, and secondly, come with each other in conflict. In The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, the theme of the pursuit of love and domination was developed, but the theme of alienation was also touched upon; in New Paths in Psychoanalysis, narcissism and perfectionism (the pursuit of perfection) were added to interpersonal defense strategies. These books also contain descriptions of intrapsychic defense strategies such as self-devaluation, self-reproach, neurotic suffering, and oversubordination to standards, but their content has been more fully developed in Horney's last two books.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of Horney's new version of psychoanalysis was the shift in the analyst's interest (both in theory and practice): from an interest in the patient's past to an interest in his present. If Freud's focus was on the genesis of neurosis, Horney's focus was on its structure. She believed that psychoanalysis should focus not so much on the infantile roots of neurosis as on the existing constellation of defenses and internal conflicts of the neurotic. This feature of her approach sharply distinguished it from classical psychoanalysis and made it unacceptable to those who were mainly interested in the patient's past.
In New Pathways in Psychoanalysis, Horney distinguished between an evolutionist approach and a "mechanical evolutionist" one. Evolutionary thinking suggests that “what exists today did not originally exist in this form, but adopted it in stages. In these antecedent stages we may find very little resemblance to the present form, but the present form is inconceivable without the antecedents." Mechanical evolutionary thinking insists that "nothing really new has been created in the process of evolution" and "what we see today is only the old in a new package." For Horney, the deep influence of early childhood experiences does not preclude later development, while for Freud, nothing new happens with a person after he is five years old, and all further reactions or experiences should be considered only as a reproduction of early childhood ones. The mechanistic-evolutionary aspect of Freud's thinking was reflected in his idea of the absence of time in the unconscious, in his understanding of compulsive repetition, fixation, regression and transference. Horney considers this aspect of Freud's thinking to be responsible "for the degree to which man's inclinations are attributed to infantilism, and his present is explained by the past."
At the core of Freud's concept of the relation of childhood experiences to adult behavior is the doctrine of the absence of time in the unconscious. The fears, desires or integral experiences repressed in childhood are not influenced by further experience that appears as a person grows up. This allows one to construct a concept of fixation, either in relation to the person's early environment (fixation on the father or mother), or in relation to the stage of development of his libido. According to this concept, it becomes possible to consider the further attachments of a person or stereotypes of his behavior as a reproduction of the past, frozen in the unconscious and not subject to change.
Horney is not at all trying to refute the doctrine of the absence of time in the unconscious or a number of concepts associated with it. Rather, she is trying to build (on a different set of premises) her own theory: “the point of view, which is different from the mechanistic one, is such that in the process of organic development there never arises simple repetitions or regressions to previous stages.” The past is always contained in the present, but not in the form of its reproduction, but in the form of its development. The path of "real development" is the path in which "every step entails the next." Thus, "interpretations that link the difficulties of the present directly with the influence of childhood are scientifically only half true, and practically useless."
According to Horney's model, early experiences affect us so deeply not because they create fixations that cause a person to reproduce infantile stereotypes, but because they determine our attitude to the world. Subsequent experiences also influence our attitude to the world, and it eventually translates into defense strategies and character traits of an adult. Early experiences may be more influential than later ones, because they determine the direction of development, but the character of an adult is a product of all previous interactions of his psyche and environment.
There is another important difference between Horney and Freud Freud believed that these decisive childhood experiences are relatively few and mostly sexual in nature, while Horney was sure that the totality of childhood experiences is responsible for neurotic development. The life of an adult person goes awry and awry due to the fact that in childhood the whole culture around him, his relationships with peers and especially family relationships made the child feel insecure, unloved and unwanted, and this gave rise to basic anxiety in him. These unfavorable conditions give rise to the development of a special character structure, and from it all further difficulties arise.
Horney points out that there is a connection between our present and early childhood, but it is complex and difficult to trace. She believes that in trying to understand the symptom in terms of its infantile origin, "we are trying to explain one unknown ... through another, about which we know even less." It would be more fruitful “to focus on the forces that now move a person or hinder his movement; there is a reasonable chance that we will be able to understand them, even without knowing very much about his childhood.
III. Mature Horney theory
In New Ways in Psychoanalysis, Horney speaks of the distortion of the "immediate I of a person, advancing under the pressure of the environment, as a central feature of neurosis. The aim of the treatment is "to return the person to himself, to help him regain his spontaneity and find his center of gravity in himself." Horney coined the term "genuine I” (real self) in the article “Are we in the right place?” (1935) and used it again in Introspection (1942), where she first spoke of "self-realization". Neurosis and Personal Growth (1950) begins by distinguishing between healthy development, in which a person fulfills his potentialities, and neurotic development, in which he is alienated from the authentic myself. The subtitle of Horney's latest book is "The Struggle for Self-Fulfillment": her understanding of both health and neurosis is based on the concept of a real or genuine I.*
* So "genuine" or "real"? The word "genuine" allows you to immediately intuitively capture the essence of what Horney wants to say when he talks about real self. On the contrary, the content of the word “real” is much less obvious (especially for a Russian-speaking reader without a fundamental philosophical background) and needs additional clarification. I hope these clarifications will also help to understand the reasons for my translation choice in favor of the "true me".
Developing a language to describe the psychological realities unknown to Freudianism, the intensive study of which subsequently led to the formation of a new direction - humanistic psychology - Horney used the traditional pair of philosophical categories "real-ideal". At the same time, the psychological concept of “real” includes at least four substantive aspects: ontological (“essential”), epistemological (“objective”), value (“genuine”) and practical (“feasible”).
In other words, Horney's "real me" a-priory represents: 1) a set of essential, essential personality traits that determine the originality of its existence, in contrast to the "ideal self", which may include non-essential features; 2) a set of objective features, the presence of which does not depend on the will and consciousness of the individual, in contrast to the “ideal self”, the content of which, to one degree or another, can be a product of the imagination; 3) a set of genuine, real features, in contrast to the "ideal self", which may include false, false features; 4) a set of traits and inclinations that are potentially feasible in the course of personality development, in contrast to the “ideal self”, the content of which, to one degree or another, may not be feasible.
And although Horney touches on the consideration of all four aspects mentioned, the most significant for her, as a psychotherapist, is precisely the value aspect of the “real self”. After all, it is precisely the indication of the inauthenticity, the falsity of neurotic "ideals" that may have some kind of "lifting force" for the client, and by no means an indication of their "insignificance", "non-objectivity" or "impossibility". - V.D.
Genuine I- not a fixed structure, but a set of "human potentials" (such as temperament, abilities, talents, inclinations), which is part of our heredity and needs favorable conditions for development. It is not a product of learning, because no one can be taught to be himself; but this is not something that is not amenable to external influences, since actualization, the embodiment of the true I in fact, it is carried out through interaction with the outside world, which provides various ways of development. This process can go in different ways, depending on certain circumstances. However, in order for self-realization to take place at all, certain conditions are required in childhood. They include a "warm atmosphere" that allows the child to express his own thoughts and feelings, the goodwill of loved ones in meeting his various needs, and a "healthy clash of his desires and the will of others."
When a parent's neurosis prevents them from loving the child, or at least thinking about him "as a separate and distinct personality," the child develops a basic anxiety that prevents him from "treating other people directly, as his real feelings suggest, and forces him to look for other ways dealing with them." Feelings and behaviors are no longer the child's sincere self-expression, but are dictated by defense strategies. "He can go towards people, against people, or away from them."
Horney's mature theory contains descriptions of these strategies and their elaborate classification. Whereas in Our Inner Conflicts she addresses our interpersonal strategies and the conflicts they generate, Neurosis and Personal Growth gives a full account of intrapsychic defenses and their relationship to interpersonal ones.
In Neurosis and Personal Growth, Horney warns us against "one-sided attention to either intrapsychic or interpersonal factors", arguing that the dynamics of neurosis can only be understood as a process in which interpersonal conflicts lead to particular intrapsychic configurations which, being dependent from the old stereotypes of human relations, in turn change them. However, she disregards her own warning, focusing predominantly on intrapsychic factors, which creates problems for the reader. Since intrapsychic constructions are the result of interpersonal conflicts, it is more logical to begin the presentation of the theory with them. This is how Our Inner Conflicts is built, but in Neurosis and Personal Growth, Horney, wanting first of all to tell the reader about his new ideas, somewhat confuses him, starting with intrapsychic strategies, and even at times deduces interpersonal decisions from intrapsychic decisions. I would like to make a synthesis of her last two works in order to "clear the way" for the reader to faster perception of "Neurosis and Personal Growth".
Trying to cope with the feeling of “no one loves me”, with feelings of insecurity and worthlessness that give rise to basal anxiety, a person may decide to humility or agreement and start moving to people; may make an aggressive or expansive decision and start moving against people; or make a decision on alienation, leaving from people. Horney introduced the terms conciliation, aggression, withdrawal in "Our Internal Conflicts", and in "Neurosis and Personal Growth" she spoke of resignation, capture and alienation or "retirement"; but both sets of terms are interchangeable. A healthy person is able to show flexibility, mobility and choose the direction of his movement depending on the circumstances, but a person alienated from myself, the "choice" of movement becomes compulsive and uncontested. Each of the three solutions includes a certain constellation of behavioral stereotypes and personality traits, the concept of justice and a set of beliefs, ideas about human nature, about universal human values and the conditions of human life. It also includes a "bargain with fate", which implies a reward for obedience to the dictates of the chosen decision.
Each defensive direction of movement "inflates" one of the elements of basal anxiety: helplessness in the decision to agree; hostility in an aggressive decision; isolation in the decision to leave. Since all three of these feelings (helplessness, hostility, isolation) invariably arise in conditions that produce basal anxiety, the person makes a defensive strategy out of each; and since these three strategies (directions of movement) include character traits and value systems that are incompatible with each other, he is torn apart by internal conflicts. To gain a sense of wholeness, a person emphasizes one of the strategies and becomes mostly resigned, aggressive, or aloof. Which direction he chooses depends on the characteristics of his temperament and on the forces acting on him from the environment.
Other tendencies continue to exist, but become unconscious, appearing in disguised form and in a roundabout way. The conflict between tendencies was not resolved, it was simply driven underground. When the "underground" tendencies for some reason approach the surface, a person feels the most severe inner unrest, which sometimes paralyzes him, does not allow him to move in any direction at all. Under some powerful influence or under the influence of a major failure of his main decision, a person can re-elect his main defense strategy to one of the repressed ones. He believes that he has "changed", "learned a lot", but this is just replacing one defense with another.
Karen Horney (1885-1952) is one of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers of the twentieth century. Trained in medicine at the Universities of Freiburg, Göttingen and Berlin, she began her personal analysis with Carl Abraham in 1910 and in 1920 became one of the founders of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. In the twenties and early thirties, she tried to modify Sigmund Freud's theory of female psychology, while still remaining within the framework of orthodox theory. Her work was too ahead of its time to receive the attention it deserved, but since its re-publication (1967) as a collection under the general title of Women's Psychology, Horney has been considered a seminal figure in feminist psychoanalysis.
In 1932, Horney accepted an invitation from Franz Alexander to become the second director of the newly established Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, but moved to New York in 1934 to work at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Influenced by new social and intellectual currents in the United States, she published two books, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937) and New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939), which reject some of the fundamental tenets of Freudian theory and replace its biological focus with a cultural and interpersonal. These books so shocked Horney's orthodox colleagues that they forced her to leave the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. In this phase of her research, Horney joined the cultural neo-Freudians of psychoanalysis, such as Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, Clara Thompson, and Abraham Kardiner.
After leaving the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, Horney founded the American Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1941 and continued to develop her theory in a more spiritually close atmosphere. In Introspection (1942), Our Inner Conflicts (1945), and Neurosis and Personal Growth (1950), she postulated that the anxiety engendered by lack of security, love, and acceptance is dealt with by the individual by refusing from his true feelings and invents for himself artificial defense strategies, both intrapsychic and interpersonal.
Horney's ideas went through several stages in their development, and therefore her name means different things to different people. To some, she is seen as a woman whose scientific work brilliantly anticipated all objections to Freud's views on the psychology of women. For others, she is a neo-Freudian belonging to the culturalist school. And some identify it with her mature theory, which is a well-thought-out classification of defense strategies. Every stage of Horney's work is important, but I think that it is her mature theory that represents the most significant contribution to the course of psychoanalytic thought. Much of her early ideas were revised or expanded upon—by Horney herself or by others—or merged into the work of the next generation, and sometimes rediscovered by them. But with her mature theory, things are different. "Our Inner Conflicts" and "Neurosis and Personal Growth" explain a person's behavior within the current constellation of his inner conflicts and defenses. We will not find in other authors anything like this deep, extremely promising interpretation. It gives great opportunities not only to the clinician, but also to the literary critic and culturologist; it can be used in political psychology, philosophy, religion, biography and solving problems of gender identity.
Although each of Horney's works is a significant contribution to science, and therefore deserves attention, Neurosis and Personal Growth remains the main one. This book builds on her early work and develops to a large extent the ideas contained therein. Horney is famous for her clarity as an author, and Neurosis and Personal Growth is no exception; but those unfamiliar with the evolution of her ideas may find this introduction useful.
I. Horney and female psychology
While still teaching orthodox theory at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, Horney began to diverge from Freud on penis envy, female masochism, and female development, and attempted to replace the dominant phallocentric view of female psychology with a different, female view. Initially, she tried to change psychoanalysis from the inside, but eventually she moved away from many of its prejudices and created her own theory.
In her first two articles, "On the Origin of the Castration Complex in Women" (1923) and "The Departure from Femininity" (1926), Horney sought to show that the girl and woman possessed only her own biological constitution and developmental patterns, which should be considered on the basis of the feminine. beginning, and not as different from men, and not as products of their supposed inferiority to men. She challenged the psychoanalytic approach to woman as an inferior man, considering this approach to be a consequence of the gender of its creator, masculine genius, and the fruit of a culture in which the masculine principle prevailed. The prevailing male views on a woman were assimilated by psychoanalysis as a scientific picture of the essence of a woman. For Horney, it is important to understand why a man sees a woman in this way. She argues that a man's envy of pregnancy, childbearing, motherhood, the female breast and the opportunity to feed on it gives rise to an unconscious tendency to devalue all this, and that the male creative impulse serves to overcompensate for his insignificant role in the process of reproduction. A man's "womb envy" is certainly stronger than a woman's "penis envy" because a man wants to belittle a woman much more than a woman wants to belittle a man.
In later articles, Horney continued her analysis of the male view of woman in order to show the lack of scientific content. In the article “Mistrust Between the Sexes” (1931), she argues that a woman is seen as a “second-class creature”, because “at all times the more powerful party created the ideology necessary to ensure its dominant position”, and “in this ideology, the differences of the weak were interpreted as second rate." In Fear of Woman (1932), Horney traces this male fear back to the boy's fear of his genitals being inadequate to his mother's. A woman threatens a man not with castration, but with humiliation, threatening "masculine self-respect." Growing up, a man continues to worry deep down about the size of his penis and about his potency. This anxiety is not duplicated by any female anxiety: “a woman plays her role by the very fact of her being”, she does not need to constantly prove her feminine essence. Therefore, a woman does not have a narcissistic fear of a man. To cope with his anxiety, a man advances the ideal of productivity, seeks sexual "victories" or seeks to humiliate the object of love.
Horney does not deny that women are often jealous of men and dissatisfied with their female role. Many of her works are devoted to the "masculinity complex", which she defines in "Forbidden Femininity" (1926) as "a complex of feelings and fantasies of a woman, the content of which is determined by the unconscious desire for the advantages that the position of a man gives, envy of men, desire to be a man and refusal to from the role of a woman. Initially, she believed that a woman's masculinity complex was inevitable, since it was necessary in order to avoid the feelings of guilt and anxiety that are a product of the Oedipal situation, but she subsequently revised her opinion. The masculinity complex is a product of cultural male dominance and the characteristics of a girl's family dynamics, Horney argued.
“In real life, a girl is doomed from birth to be convinced of her inferiority, whether it is expressed rudely or subtly. This situation constantly stimulates her masculinity complex” (“Escape from Femininity”).
Speaking of family dynamics, Horney at first considered the relationship of the girl with the men of the family to be the most important, but later the mother becomes the central figure in the case histories of women who suffered from a masculinity complex. In Maternal Conflicts (1933) she enumerates all those traits of the girl's childhood which she considers responsible for the masculinity complex.
“Here’s what is typical: girls, as a rule, had very early reasons not to love their own female world. The reasons for this could be maternal intimidation, deep disappointment in relationships associated with a father or brother, early sexual experience that horrified the girl, favoritism of parents towards a brother.
All this was in the childhood of Karen Horney herself.
In her work on female psychology, Horney gradually moved away from Freud's belief that "anatomy is destiny" and increasingly singled out cultural factors as a source of women's problems and gender-role identification problems. No, a woman does not envy a male penis, but a man's privileges. She really needs to have not a penis, but the opportunity to fulfill herself, developing the human abilities inherent in her. The patriarchal ideal of a woman does not always meet her inner needs, although the power of this ideal often forces a woman to behave in accordance with it. In The Problem of Female Masochism, Horney challenges the theory of "the ancestral kinship between masochism and the female organism". This belief of some psychoanalysts merely reflects the stereotypes of a masculine culture, while Horney traces a number of social conditions that make a woman more masochistic than a man. Moreover, a comparison of different cultures shows that these conditions are not universal: some cultures are more unfavorable for a woman's development than others.
Although Horney devoted most of her professional life to the problems of female psychology, she left this topic in 1935, believing that the role of culture in shaping the psyche of a woman is too great for us to make a clear distinction: this is female, and this is not. In a lecture entitled "Woman's Fear of Action" (1935), Horney argues that we will only be able to understand what the psychological difference between woman and man really is when a woman is freed from the concept of femininity imposed by masculine culture. Our goal should not be to define the true essence of femininity, but to encourage "the full and comprehensive development of the personality of each person." After that, she began to develop her theory, which she considered to be gender-neutral, applicable to both men and women.
II. Break with Freud
Horney published two books in the thirties. The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937) and New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939), which led the psychoanalytic community to "excommunicate" her from psychoanalysis. In both books she criticized Freud's theory and advanced her own.
One of the main features of Horney's work at that time was the emphasis on the role of culture in the formation of neurotic conflicts and defenses; the importance of culture was increasingly emphasized by her already in works devoted to female psychology. Moving to the US and realizing that country was different from central Europe made her even more receptive to the work of sociologists, anthropologists, and culturally oriented psychoanalysts such as Erich Fromm, Herold Lasswell, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Alfred Adler, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Horney showed that Freud, due to his special interest in the biological roots of human behavior, made a not entirely correct assumption about the universality of feelings, attitudes and attitudes inherent in his culture. Ignoring social factors, he connects the neurotic's egocentrism with narcissistic libido, his hostility with the instinct of destruction, his obsession with money with anal libido, and acquisitiveness with oral libido. But anthropology shows that each culture has its own, distinct from other cultures, tendencies to produce all these character types. Following Malinowski and others, Horney sees the Oedipus complex as a culturally determined phenomenon that can be greatly reduced through social change.
Freud considers neurosis to be derived from the clash of culture and instinct, but Horney disagrees. According to Freud, we need culture to survive, and in order to maintain it, we must suppress or sublimate our instincts. And since our happiness consists in the full and immediate satisfaction of instincts, we must choose between happiness and survival. Horney does not believe that this clash between the individual and society is inevitable. A clash occurs when an unfavorable environment frustrates our emotional needs and thereby arouses fear and hostility. Freud portrays man as insatiable, destructive and anti-social, but according to Horney, all these are neurotic reactions to adverse conditions rather than an expression of instincts.
Although Horney is often considered a representative of the cultural school, the focus on culture was only a passing phase of her work. A more important part of her work in the thirties was a new version of the structure of neurosis, first presented by her in The Neurotic Personality of Our Time. Horney did not deny the importance of childhood in the emotional development of a person, as is sometimes thought, but she attached importance not to the frustration of libidinal impulses, but to the pathogenic conditions of the child's life in a family where he does not feel safe, loved and valued. As a result, he develops "basal anxiety" - a feeling of helplessness in the face of a hostile world, which he tries to alleviate by developing such defensive strategies as the pursuit of love, the desire for power or alienation. Since these strategies are incompatible with each other, they come into conflict, which creates new difficulties. In her subsequent books, Horney developed and refined this model of neurosis.
Horney believed that our defense strategies are doomed to failure because they create a vicious circle: the means by which we want to alleviate anxiety, on the contrary, increases it. For example, the frustration of the need for love makes this need insatiable, and the exactingness and jealousy that flow from insatiability make it increasingly less likely that a person will find a friend. Those who have not been loved develop a strong feeling that no one loves them, and they discard any evidence to the contrary, and look for bad intentions behind any manifestation of sympathy. Being deprived of love has made them dependent, but they are afraid to depend on another because it makes them too vulnerable. Horney compares this situation to that of "a person who is starving but dares not eat anything for fear that the food is poisoned".
Horney devoted most of The Neurotic Personality to an analysis of the neurotic need for love, but she dwells in this work on the desire for power, prestige and possession, which develops when a person despairs of finding love. These neurotic strivings are the product of anxiety, anger, and feelings of inferiority. They are insatiable, because no amount of success will be enough for a neurotic to feel safe, calm, or satisfied with his achievements. The need for love or success is fruitful and can be satisfied if it is not compulsive.
According to Horney, people try to cope with basic anxiety by developing not one but several defense strategies.
“A person feels at the same time an imperative attraction to rule over everyone and be loved by everyone, he is attracted to give in to everyone and everyone to impose his will, to get away from people and beg them for friendship.” As a result, "he is torn apart by irresolvable conflicts, which are often the dynamic center of a neurosis."
So, in Horney's early books, a paradigm of the structure of neuroses developed, according to which disturbances in human relationships generate basal anxiety, which leads to the development of defense strategies that, firstly, nullify themselves, and secondly, come with each other in conflict. In The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, the theme of the pursuit of love and domination was developed, but the theme of alienation was also touched upon; in New Paths in Psychoanalysis, narcissism and perfectionism (the pursuit of perfection) were added to interpersonal defense strategies. These books also contain descriptions of intrapsychic defense strategies such as self-devaluation, self-reproach, neurotic suffering, and oversubordination to standards, but their content has been more fully developed in Horney's last two books.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of Horney's new version of psychoanalysis was the shift in the analyst's interest (both in theory and practice): from an interest in the patient's past to an interest in his present. If Freud's focus was on the genesis of the neurosis, Horney's focus was on its structure. She believed that psychoanalysis should focus not so much on the infantile roots of neurosis as on the existing constellation of defenses and internal conflicts of the neurotic. This feature of her approach sharply distinguished it from classical psychoanalysis and made it unacceptable to those who were mainly interested in the patient's past.
In New Pathways in Psychoanalysis, Horney distinguished between an evolutionist approach and a "mechanical evolutionist" one. Evolutionary thinking suggests that “what exists today did not originally exist in this form, but adopted it in stages. In these antecedent stages we may find very little resemblance to the present form, but the present form is inconceivable without the antecedents." Mechanical evolutionary thinking insists that "nothing really new has been created in the process of evolution" and "what we see today is only the old in a new package." For Horney, the deep influence of early childhood experiences does not preclude later development, while for Freud, nothing new happens with a person after he is five years old, and all further reactions or experiences should be considered only as a reproduction of early childhood ones. The mechanistic-evolutionary aspect of Freud's thinking was reflected in his idea of the absence of time in the unconscious, in his understanding of compulsive repetition, fixation, regression and transference. Horney considers this aspect of Freud's thinking to be responsible "for the degree to which man's inclinations are attributed to infantilism, and his present is explained by the past."
At the core of Freud's concept of the relation of childhood experiences to adult behavior is the doctrine of the absence of time in the unconscious. The fears, desires or integral experiences repressed in childhood are not influenced by further experience that appears as a person grows up. This allows one to construct a concept of fixation, either in relation to the person's early environment (fixation on the father or mother), or in relation to the developmental stage of his libido. According to this concept, it becomes possible to consider the further attachments of a person or stereotypes of his behavior as a reproduction of the past, frozen in the unconscious and not subject to change.
Horney is not at all trying to refute the doctrine of the absence of time in the unconscious or a number of concepts associated with it. Rather, she is trying to build (on a different set of premises) her own theory: “the point of view, which is different from the mechanistic one, is such that in the process of organic development there never arises simple repetitions or regressions to previous stages.” The past is always contained in the present, but not in the form of its reproduction, but in the form of its development. The path of "real development" is the path in which "each step entails the next." Thus, "interpretations that connect the difficulties of the present directly with the influence of childhood are scientifically only half the truth, and practically useless."
According to Horney's model, early experiences affect us so deeply not because they create fixations that cause a person to reproduce infantile stereotypes, but because they determine our attitude to the world. Subsequent experiences also influence our attitude to the world, and it eventually translates into defense strategies and character traits of an adult. Early experiences may be more influential than later ones, since they determine the direction of development, but the character of an adult is the product of all previous interactions of his psyche and environment.
There is another important difference between Horney and Freud Freud believed that these decisive childhood experiences are relatively few and mostly sexual in nature, while Horney was sure that the totality of childhood experiences is responsible for neurotic development. The life of an adult person goes awry and awry due to the fact that in childhood the whole culture around him, his relationships with peers and especially family relationships made the child feel insecure, unloved and unwanted, and this gave rise to basic anxiety in him. These unfavorable conditions give rise to the development of a special character structure, and from it all further difficulties arise.
Horney points out that there is a connection between our present and early childhood, but it is complex and difficult to trace. She believes that in trying to understand the symptom in terms of its infantile origin, "we are trying to explain one unknown ... through another, about which we know even less." It would be more fruitful “to focus on the forces that now move a person or hinder his movement; there is a reasonable chance that we will be able to understand them, even without knowing very much about his childhood.
III. Mature Horney theory
In New Ways in Psychoanalysis, Horney speaks of the distortion of the "immediate self of a person" that comes under the pressure of the environment as a central feature of neurosis. The goal of treatment is "to return the person to himself, to help him regain his spontaneity and find his center of gravity in himself." Horney coined the term "real self" in "Are we in the right place?" (1935) and used it again in Introspection (1942), where she first spoke of "self-realization". Neurosis and Personal Growth (1950) begins by distinguishing between healthy development, in which a person realizes his potentialities, and neurotic development, in which he is alienated from his true self. The subtitle of this latest book by Horney is The Struggle for Self-Fulfillment: her understanding of both health and neurosis is based on the concept of the real or authentic self.*
* So "genuine" or "real"? The word "genuine" allows you to immediately intuitively capture the essence of what Horney wants to say when he talks about the real self. On the contrary, the content of the word “real” is much less obvious (especially for a Russian-speaking reader without a fundamental philosophical background) and needs additional clarification. I hope these clarifications will also help to understand the reasons for my translation choice in favor of the "true me".
Developing a language to describe the psychological realities unknown to Freudianism, the intensive study of which subsequently led to the formation of a new direction - humanistic psychology - Horney used the traditional pair of philosophical categories "real-ideal". At the same time, the psychological concept of “real” includes at least four substantive aspects: ontological (“essential”), epistemological (“objective”), value (“genuine”) and practical (“feasible”).
In other words, Horney's "real self" by definition is: 1) a set of essential, essential personality traits that determine the originality of its existence, in contrast to the "ideal self", which may include non-essential features; 2) a set of objective features, the presence of which does not depend on the will and consciousness of the individual, in contrast to the “ideal self”, the content of which, to one degree or another, can be a product of the imagination; 3) a set of genuine, real features, in contrast to the "ideal self", which may include false, false features; 4) a set of traits and inclinations that are potentially feasible in the course of personality development, in contrast to the “ideal self”, the content of which may be unrealizable to one degree or another.
And although Horney touches on the consideration of all four aspects mentioned, the most significant for her, as a psychotherapist, is precisely the value aspect of the “real self”. After all, it is precisely the indication of the inauthenticity, the falsity of neurotic "ideals" that can have some kind of "lifting force" for the client, and by no means an indication of their "insignificance", "non-objectivity" or "impossibility". - V.D.
The real self is not a fixed structure, but a set of "inherent human potentialities" (such as temperament, abilities, talents, inclinations), which is part of our heredity and needs favorable conditions for development. It is not a product of learning, because no one can be taught to be himself; but this is not something that is not amenable to external influences, since actualization, the embodiment of the true self in reality is carried out through interaction with the outside world, which provides various ways of development. This process can go in different ways, depending on certain circumstances. However, in order for self-realization to take place at all, certain conditions are required in childhood. They include a "warm atmosphere" that allows the child to express his own thoughts and feelings, the goodwill of loved ones in meeting his various needs, and a "healthy clash of his desires and the will of others."
When a parent's neurosis prevents them from loving the child, or at least thinking about him "as a separate and distinct personality," the child develops a basic anxiety that prevents him from "treating other people directly, as his real feelings suggest, and forces him to look for other ways dealing with them." Feelings and behaviors are no longer the child's sincere self-expression, but are dictated by defense strategies. "He can go towards people, against people, or away from them."
Horney's mature theory contains descriptions of these strategies and their elaborate classification. Whereas in Our Inner Conflicts she addresses our interpersonal strategies and the conflicts they generate, Neurosis and Personal Growth gives a full account of intrapsychic defenses and their relationship to interpersonal ones.
In Neurosis and Personal Growth, Horney warns us against "one-sided attention to either intrapsychic or interpersonal factors", arguing that the dynamics of neurosis can only be understood as a process in which interpersonal conflicts lead to particular intrapsychic configurations which, being dependent from the old stereotypes of human relations, in turn change them. However, she disregards her own warning, focusing predominantly on intrapsychic factors, which creates problems for the reader. Since intrapsychic constructions are the result of interpersonal conflicts, it is more logical to begin the presentation of the theory with them. This is how Our Inner Conflicts is built, but in Neurosis and Personal Growth, Horney, wanting first of all to tell the reader about his new ideas, somewhat confuses him, starting with intrapsychic strategies, and even at times deduces interpersonal decisions from intrapsychic decisions. I would like to make a synthesis of her last two works in order to "clear the way" for the reader to faster perception of "Neurosis and Personal Growth".
Trying to cope with the feeling of “no one loves me”, with feelings of insecurity and uselessness that give rise to basal anxiety, a person can decide on humility or conciliation and start moving towards people; may take an aggressive or expansive decision and start a movement against people; or make a decision about alienation, leaving people. Horney introduced the terms conciliation, aggression, withdrawal in "Our Internal Conflicts", and in "Neurosis and Personal Growth" she spoke of resignation, capture and alienation or "retirement"; but both sets of terms are interchangeable. A healthy person is able to show flexibility, mobility and choose the direction of his movement depending on the circumstances, but in a person alienated from himself, the “choice” of movement becomes compulsive and uncontested. Each of the three solutions includes a certain constellation of behavioral stereotypes and personality traits, the concept of justice and a set of beliefs, ideas about human nature, about universal human values and the conditions of human life. It also includes a "bargain with fate", which implies a reward for obedience to the dictates of the chosen decision.
Each defensive direction of movement "inflates" one of the elements of basal anxiety: helplessness in the decision to agree; hostility in an aggressive decision; isolation in the decision to leave. Since all three of these feelings (helplessness, hostility, isolation) invariably arise in conditions that produce basal anxiety, the person makes a defensive strategy out of each; and since these three strategies (directions of movement) include character traits and value systems that are incompatible with each other, he is torn apart by internal conflicts. To gain a sense of wholeness, a person emphasizes one of the strategies and becomes mostly resigned, aggressive, or aloof. Which direction he chooses depends on the characteristics of his temperament and on the forces acting on him from the environment.
Other tendencies continue to exist, but become unconscious, appearing in disguised form and in a roundabout way. The conflict between tendencies was not resolved, it was simply driven underground. When the "underground" tendencies for some reason approach the surface, a person feels the most severe inner unrest, which sometimes paralyzes him, does not allow him to move in any direction at all. Under some powerful influence or under the influence of a major failure of his main decision, a person can re-elect his main defense strategy to one of the repressed ones. He believes that he has "changed", "learned a lot", but this is just replacing one defense with another.
The one dominated by humility tries to overcome his basic anxiety by seeking favor and approval and establishing control over others through their need, interest in him. He seeks to bind others to himself with his weakness, love, compliance, kindness. Since he must at the same time surrender to someone's mercy and must be able to safely express his aggressive tendency, he is often attracted to the opposite, expansive type of person: through him he can participate in the mastery of life. Such a relationship often develops into a "painful addiction" in which a crisis occurs if the compliant partner begins to feel that his submission does not receive the reward for which he sacrificed himself.
The values of the compliant and humble “are in the field of kindness, pity, love, generosity, self-giving, humility; while self-conceit, ambition, heartlessness, shamelessness, dominance disgust them.
Since they consider “any desire, aspiration, search for something more” to be a “daring and dangerous challenge to fate”, their self-affirmation and self-defense are extremely inhibited. They choose Christian values, but forcedly, because these values are necessary for their system of defenses. They are forced to believe that it is necessary to “turn the other cheek”, and that there is an order established by providence in the world, and virtue will eventually triumph. Their deal is that if they are humble, loving, avoid pride and do not pursue fame, fate and other people will be merciful to them. If fate does not want to keep this deal, they either despair of divine justice, or come to the conclusion that they are guilty, or begin to believe in justice that surpasses human understanding. They need not only faith in the justice of the world order, but also faith in the natural kindness of people, therefore they are very sensitive to disappointments in this area.
In the humble personality, Horney writes, "many of her aggressive tendencies are deeply repressed." Aggression is repressed because aggressive feelings or actions would come into violent conflict with the need to be kind and would jeopardize the whole strategy of achieving love, justice, protection and approval. Thus, the strategy leads to increased hostility, as "humility and kindness tempt to step on their feet", and "dependence on others contributes to exceptional vulnerability." The rage seething in the depths of the soul of such people threatens their idea of \u200b\u200bthemselves, their philosophy of life, their deal with fate; it must be repressed, masked or justified in order to avoid growing self-hatred and hostility towards others.