Karen Horney & The Relational Theory
•Who the Hell was this Douche?•
Karen Danielson Horney (1885 - 1952) was an female german psychiatrist who, contrary to the original “orthodox” psychanalists in her period, theorized and researched the origins of mental disorders not as originted from the conflict between sexual desires and social repression (a moronic hypothesis, let’s be honest), but instead, considering the origins of those distress were result of bad nurturing and parental conflict during the childhood (a more realistic aproach ffs). She also had the insigth to understand the cultural, social and enveriomental influences on the development of the psyche and the origins of mental disorders.
Having a rare opportunity for the woman in her decade, she was able to attend an college and graduate in medicine in the University of Freiburg at 1911 (age 26). After moving to Berlin, she became a psychoanalytic patient to a disciple of Freud, Karl Abraham, and with time she developed interest over the field, becoming a specialist and recieving her degree in 1915. She lectured on the Freudian Theory while her own challenges to the theory brewed on her mind.
In 1932, escaping the hostile professional environment in Germany due to her (already more stabilished) criticism over the stagnant views of the Freudian psychoanalysis, she moved to USA where her career and research would develop more on the following years till the end of her life.
To explain personality and the diseases the mind has, Horney focused mainly on understanding the effects of the relationship of the young human and their nurturers have on the development of the little one.
The child is highly dependent on their nurturers not only for physiological needs and survival, but also for psychological security.
1)Basic Anxiety and Basic Hostility
When psychological safety is not garanted and the infant is exposed to less-than-ideal circumstances, the child feels extremely vulnerable generating a feeling that Horney called as basic anxiety, which she defined as “the feeling of isolation and helplessness in an potentially hostile world”.
Parental neglect and rejection also make the child angry thowards the supposed nurturers (and also the world), this feeling, named basic hostility by Horney, adds even more anxiety to the kid’s burden: conflicted between expressing this hostility and be punished by doing so or holding it to themselves and accept the harsh situation they live on.
All of this generates stress for the infant: in one hand they need their parents’ care and wants to be noticed by them but, on the other hand, the neglect makes them frustrated and they want to “punish” and show hostility to their nurturers.
2)The Three Interpersonal Orientations
The young one then has to take a stance and find a solution for this distress. Horney pointed out that in the end, one of three ways of dealing with the anxiety happens as the child makes their stance: either them contain their hostility and appeal to have love and attention from their nurturers and peers (Self-Effacing Solution), or they express their hostility to relief the stress and trying to harness power and mastery over the world and whatever may harm them (Expansive Solution) or they seek isolation from the world and try to grow as independent as possible for themselves(Resignation Solution).
I)Self-Effacing Solution/moving towards people - The Compliant Personality & The Appeal of Love
This stance is focused on the seek of support and affection while minimizing selfish needs that could interfere with being loved and accepted.
The strategy that this personality lives by is summed up by the motto: “if you love me, you won’t hurt me”. Characterized by an overall submissive attitude, they tend to give in to others to avoid being rejected and hurt.
On unhealthy neurotic states, this personality is self-depreciating and practices constant martyrdom, feeling that everyone else is better than them and falling into extreme abusive relationships.
morbid dependency: the need for a partner (friend, lover, spouse);
“poor little me”: feeling of being weak and helpless;
Self-subordination: assumption that others are superior;
martyrdom: sacrifice and suffering for others;
Need for love: desire to find self worth in a relationship.
Altruism → “I like to help others”;
Need for relationships → “I feel better when I’m in a relationship”;
Self-Abasement → “I’m self sacrificing”.
II)Expansive Solution/moving against people - The Agressive Personality & The Appeal of Mastery
These people adopt an stance of emphasizing the mastery of skills and power they have over the others, which is actually an struggle to have protection over the vulnerability of being helpless on the world.
An strategy that may be summed up by the motto “If I’ve power no one can hurt me”, the appeal for having power can come through less subtle ways of affirming domination or more quiet ways through competitive mastery.
narcissistic: in love with idealized self-image;
perfectionistic: high standards;
arrogant-vindictive: pride and strength;
need to be right: obsession w/ wining a fight or a competition;
need for recognition: to be admired;
Malevolence → “The weak make me angry”;
Power → “I like to be on command”;
Strength → “I test myself in fearful situations to make myself stronger”.
III)Resignation/moving away from people - The Detached Personality & The Appeal of Freedom
If the attempts of connecting to the nurturers and the world fails and the child is rejected and pushed away, it ends giving up and starts seeking solitude by themselves, running away from the dependency & need of recognition from the others.
Giving up on solving the problem of basic anxiety through love or power, these people withdraw to avoid the conflict completely, seemely living by the motto “If I withdraw, nothing can hurt me”.
In lookout for freedom and self-sufficiency, detached types develop considerable resourcefulness and independence.
persistent resignation and lack of striving: the aversion to effort and change;
rebelious against constraints or influences: the desire for freedom;
shallow living: an onlooker at self and life, detached from emotional experiences and wishes;
self-sufficient and independent: uninvolved with people;
need for privacy: keep looking others outside the magic circle of self.
Need for Aloness → “I prefer to be alone”;
Avoidance → “I avoid questions about my personal life”;
Self-Sufficiency → “I don’t really need people”.
IV)Healthy Vs Neurotic Interpersonal Orientations
According to Horney, a healthy person adopts, when appropriate, any of the three orientations towards people because each is adaptative in certain situations. Harmonic interpersonal relationships are important source of life satisfaction and being able to change approaches to multiple interactions is how you achieve that.
Each of those solutions is accordingly applied when the human is Healthy: taking initiative when needed to expose opinion, being kind when needs empathy and affection, backing off when too stressed over a problem.
The unhealthy neurotic, opposingly, will only choose to take one stance towards any conflict or interaction, unable to build rich relationships with people or have a constructive life.
To resolve of the conflict between helplessness and hostility by the neurotic is given through the adoption of “defense mechanisms” by the individual: unconscious processes that the mind adopt to deal with anxiety and that, in unhealthy neurotic personalities, work on deny, manipulate or distorting reality.
Whilst healthy individuals use healthy defense methods to cope with anxiety and life, an unhealthy person will adopt often harmful cooping methods that don’t solve the conflict nor lead to growth as an individual.
Horney classified four main defense mechanisms on her theory, besides other minors ones, those being:
-moving towards or against others
Firstly, the neurotic may try to enclipse part of the conflict between helplessness and hostility by denying one side and rising the opposite in favor. This is the adoption of one of the interpersonal orientations previously described: by eclipsing hostility or helplessness, the person chooses to move towards or against people (respectively).
Moving away from others and detaching themselves from the anxiety and people is the second adjustment strategy. This happens because of the nature of the problem: it’s of interpersonal origin, therefore moving away from people immediately reduces the experience of the conflict.
-moving away from the real self
To Horney, the core of someone’s personality is characterized by the potential of growth and being unique, the real self.
The neurotic, unable to cope with deficiencies, having lost touch with the real self and striving for achieving something seemingly better, it generates an imagined idealized self, which, supposedly, is how one can solve the neurotic conflict.
The idealized may become the basis for intense striving, and the constant struggle to achieve and fulfill the demands of the idealized self takes people further away from the real self. Those strives and demands, and the struggle to live up to the idealized self’s image is what Horney called of →The Tyranny of the Shoulds←.
The inner demands urge us to become closer to the idealized self but increase alienation from the real self. This “perfectionism” causes people to strive for high ideals and, even if it may produce high performance sometimes required when working, the cost may be more stress and dissatisfaction towards life.
Horney states that the solution to this defense mechanism’s fault is the return to the real self and their imperfections: recognition of what you truly are and working on solving the imperfections instead of adopting more behaviors to cover them up should lead to growth of the real self again.
-projection of the inner conflict
This adjustment strategy involves the projection of the inner conflict on external elements and, therefore, shifting blame the individual’s own faults to external unrelated factors. The projection of the neurotic’s own unacceptable tendencies for the idealized self are instead perceived as someone else’s characteristics.
Externalization may also not only restrain to characteristics, but also involve feelings such as oppression, rejection and worthlessness, for example: someone with intense feelings of being worthless to themselves might instead express it as thinking they’re instead, worthless to others and that others are unable to see worth in them, but in fact, it’s the own person who is unable to see worth in themselves and put as source of it the others.
Neurotics often externalize feelings of self-contempt, either by thinking that others despise them (projection of the impulse) or by despising others (displacement of the object of contempt). Compliant types usually externalize the first way while Aggressive types externalize the in the second form.
All these four attempts at resolve occur in all neurosis, according to Horney, although not with equal strength. The neurotics attempt to create an artificial harmony instead of actually solving the problem.
4)Cultural Determinants of Development
Take the fact that different cultures through the world and ages have different values and concepts: Confucian infused Asian cultures may present higher valuing of close family ties than other western cultures; conservative countries might consider openness to sexuality and libidinous behavior something object of shame, whereas less strict cultures consider it a normal subject without shame; gender roles in older eras of humanity (and sadly in many places still) were more restrictive to each sex and femininity/masculinity were “defined” roles people should fit according to their sex, but in modern ages, through many struggles for a change in mindset, gender roles get weaker in society and culture.
Horney noticed those discrepancies and variety of values throughout human civilization. She understood that “there’s no such thing as normal psychology that holds for all mankind”. In contrast to Freud’s description of universal psycho-dynamics, for Horney, every form of neurosis is result of different social-cultural conditions where the individual is inserted.
Horney was a severe critic of Freud’s theory on a sore spot on his faulty ideas: the idea of gender roles.
Freud diminished completely the idea of social influence in the determination of the roles of each gender and, like a moron, believed that it was completely of biological influence how each sex partakes activities in society and relationships and excusing the blame of his extreme machismo on biology and anatomy of the female/male body.
Horney tried to understand where biology stops and anthropology begins. Culture defines the accepted masculine and feminine roles in a society, not the chromosomes and the physiology of the brain (which is originally gender neutral, in fact).
Horney also pointed out one of the lead cross-cultural differences: the valuing of individual goals and achievement, individualism, & the valuing of cooperative work and group goals, collectivism. According to her, Western cultures of European origin presented more individualistic tendencies while Eastern Confucian cultures, for example, showed more collectivist values. This influenced the stance a neurotic would take, being aggressive in the West, as an example, would be seen as normal more frequently whereas in the East, Compliance is more normalized.
Her emphasis on the role of culture in the development of neurosis, Horney opened the door for realizing that the therapist, too, is influenced by culture, bringing assumptions and bias to the understanding of their clients.
Therapy must analyze the entire personality. For her, no quick interventions focused solely on specific symptoms would actually solve neurosis or any psychological problem. She stated that the treatment of any psychological problem should be continuous as quick interventions or one session treatments would never actually help the patient to develop healthy mechanisms to cope with their lives and solve their problems.
The therapist, for her, must uncover the unconscious strategies the patient has been using to deal with neurotic conflict. These have implications for interpersonal relationships, self image, and the perception of the world. Then the detailed implications of these strategies for living are explored with the patient. These insights, supposedly, provide guidance for building new less neurotic ways of resolving conflicts. The idealized self must be given up, replaced again by the real self.
Her psychotherapy’s ultimate goal is to make fundamental changes in personality and allow the individual to develop again. This involves many aims: to increase self-responsibility; to become more genuinely independent of others; to experience feelings more spontaneously; and to become “wholehearted”, unpretentious, and fully and sincerely involved in life.
•Relations between Horney & Enneagram•
The hornevian triads are the most obvious and direct influence of Horney’s ideas and the enneagram theory. Based extensively on her researches, the Compliant, Aggressive, and Detached neurotic approaches are the basis for understanding the three different ways different personalities stablish contact with the world.
For example, compliant types in enneagram are One (1), Two (2), and Six (6). Those types fall in the compliance neurotic scale and have a tendency to “surrender” themselves to some kind of people-related aspect of society and life, and their core fears and desires demonstrate that as well. Same goes for the Aggressive types Three (3), Seven (7), and Eight (8) and the Detached types Four (4), Five (5) and Nine (9).
Understanding the general theory formulated by Horney helps understanding ennegram theory as a whole due to the insight and consideration both give to interpersonal orientations.
Although orthodox in her acceptance if the importance of childhood experience in developing personality, Horney did not believe all psychoanalytic treatment required delving into childhood recollections. Horney criticized the Freudian overemphasis on the exploration of childhood origins of neurosis, although she would doubtless agree that faulty parent-child interacting can be mended in therapy. She believed that the important insight for therapy is to understand unconscious tendencies and their functions, and exploring childhood is only useful to the extent that it enlightens this understanding.
Her detachment from “orthodox” psychoanalysis and her WILLING to RESEARCH more than just guessing and biasing sessions and writing faulty theories after, allowed psychology develop as a field scientifically.
Her insights over cultural and interpersonal influences on the personality brought a better unbiased understanding of how humans work, interact, and cope with stress in their lives. Reducing the bias over the importance of childhood and pointing out that capable humans are able to overcome such traumatic events and are able to adapt into adulthood, she demonstrated that the mind of the humankind is more dynamic than previously thought.
Crédits in one line cuz fucking 100 blocks wyd welp, fuck idc: •CREDITS• Resources •Links and Books• “O livro da Psicologia” (The psychology book) / DK - Globo Livros ||||| “Theories of personality: understanding persons / Susan C. Cloninger / PEARSON Prentice Hall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Horney https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karen-Horney