Karen Horney And Her Theory Of The Neurotic Personality
Psychiatrist Karen Horney She was one of the main representatives of neo-Freudism, a movement that challenged the conventions of traditional psychoanalysis and allowed this theoretical orientation to expand, especially in the field of neurosis.
Horney was also the first female psychiatrist to publish essays on female mental health and to question the biologicalist approaches regarding gender differences of her predecessors, which is why she is considered the founder of feminist psychology
Karen Danielsen was born in Germany in 1885 She studied medicine at the universities of Freiburg, Göttingen and Berlin, which had only recently accepted women, and graduated in 1913. During her studies she met Oskar Horney, whose surname she adopted after marrying him in 1909 and with whom she had three daughters. before they got divorced.
A few years after Horney graduated, his parents died and he entered a state of prolonged depression. It was then that began training as a psychoanalyst at the same time he underwent therapy with Karl Abraham, a pioneer of psychoanalysis whom Freud said was his best student.
Abraham attributed Horney’s symptoms to the repression of incestuous desires toward his father; Horney rejected his hypothesis and abandoned therapy. She would later become one of the leading critics of mainstream psychoanalysis and its emphasis on male sexuality.
In 1915 She was appointed secretary of the German Psychoanalytic Association founded by Abraham himself, in which the foundations of the teaching of psychoanalysis that would take place during the following decades were laid.
Horney moved to the United States with her daughters in 1932 because of the rise of Nazism and the rejection she suffered from Freud and his followers. There she established a relationship and He worked with other prominent psychoanalysts such as Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan. He devoted himself to therapy, training and developing his theory until 1952, the year of his death.
Neo-Freudism and feminist psychology
It is considered that Horney and Alfred Adler are the founders of neo-Freudism a current of psychoanalysis that emerged as a reaction to some of Freud’s postulates and facilitated alternative developments.
Specifically, Horney rejected early psychoanalysis’s emphasis on sexuality and aggressiveness as determining factors in the development of personality and neuroses. To this author the obsession of Freud and other male psychiatrists with the penis seemed particularly absurd.
Horney considered that “penis envy” was explained by social inequality between genders; What women envied in men was not their sexual organ, but their social role, and the same thing could happen in the opposite sense. She also considered that these roles were largely determined by culture, and not only by biological differences.
Between 1922 and 1937 Horney made various theoretical contributions to female psychology, becoming the first feminist psychiatrist Among the topics he wrote about, the overvaluation of the male figure, the difficulties of motherhood, and the contradictions inherent to monogamy stand out.
Neurosis, real self and self-realization
According to Horney, neurosis is an alteration in a person’s relationship with themselves and with others. The key factor in the appearance of symptoms is How Parents Handle Anxiety of the child during his development.
Neurotic personality or character neurosis arises when parents do not provide their children with a loving and safe environment, generating feelings of isolation, helplessness and hostility. This blocks normal development and prevents the person from becoming their “real self”
In Horney’s work, the real self is equivalent to identity. If an individual’s personal growth is healthy, their behaviors and relationships develop appropriately, which leads to self-actualization. For Horney this is a natural human tendency; Later humanists such as Rogers and Maslow would hold the same belief.
On the contrary, the identity of neurotic people is divided between the real self and the ideal self. Since the goals of the ideal self are unrealistic, the person identifies with a devalued image of himself, which leads him to distance himself even further from the real self. Thus, neurotics alternate between perfectionism and self-deprecation.
Neurotic personality types
Horney’s theory of neurosis describes three types of neurotic personality, or neurotic tendencies. These are divided according to the means that the person uses to seek security, and are consolidated through the reinforcements obtained from their environment during childhood.
1. Complacent or submissive
The character neurosis of the complacent type is characterized by seeking the approval and affection of others It appears as a consequence of continuous feelings of helplessness, neglect and abandonment in early development.
In these cases the self is annulled as a source of security and reinforcement, and the internal conflict is replaced by the external one. Thus, submissive neurotic people often believe that their problems could be solved by a new partner, for example.
In this case hostility predominates in the relationship with parents According to Horney, expansive neurotics express their sense of identity by dominating and exploiting others. They tend to be selfish, distant and ambitious people who seek to be known, admired and, sometimes, feared by their environment or by society in general.
3. Isolated and resigned
When neither submission nor aggressiveness allow the child to capture the attention of his parents, he may develop an isolated type of character neurosis. In these people there are needs for perfectionism, independence and loneliness exaggerated that lead to a detached and shallow life.
