Concept
Idealized image
In Karen Horney's theory, the glorified picture of himself or herself that a neurotic person creates in place of the actual self, in which conflicting trends appear transfigured as aspects of a rich personality. Unlike genuine ideals it is static and unattainable, demands to be lived up to and confirmed by others, and breeds arrogance and self-contempt; in her later work it becomes the idealized self, pursued in a search for glory.
Development
1945
introduced by Karen Horney
In Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis (1945)
Relations
- gave rise to Tyranny of the should
The shoulds are the demands by which the neurotic tries to close the gap between the idealized image and the actual self.
- derives from Neurotic trends
In Our Inner Conflicts the idealized image is one of the attempts to solve the conflict between the neurotic trends, by transfiguring them into aspects of a single grand self.
- opposed by Real self
Horney defines the two against each other: the more the idealized image takes hold, the more the real self is dimmed.
- diverges from Narcissism
Horney held that Freud's ego ideal, narcissism and superego each caught only one aspect of the phenomenon she described whole as the idealized image.
Works
- 1945
Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis
In this book Horney sets out a theory of neurosis centred on conflict between incompatible attitudes toward other people. In the introduction she traces her path away from Freud. It began with doubts about his feminine psychology and led, with Erich Fromm's help, to the cultural conditions of neurosis. She came to hold that neuroses are generated by disturbances in human relationships, and that the libido theory was no longer tenable. The ten neurotic trends she had listed in Self-Analysis are here regrouped into three basic attitudes: moving toward people, moving against them and moving away from them. Each overstresses one element of basic anxiety: helplessness, hostility or isolation. Their clash is the basic conflict, the dynamic centre of neurosis. Freud saw conflict as a battle between repressed and repressing forces, universal and in principle insoluble. Horney places it between contradictory neurotic trends and holds that it can be resolved where it arises. The book then examines the neurotic's attempts at a solution. One side of the conflict may be suppressed, or the person may withdraw into detachment. The idealized image is the most important attempt: in it the conflicting trends appear not as conflicts but as aspects of a rich personality. Externalization is the tendency to experience inner processes as though they occurred outside oneself. It is wider than projection, and Horney calls it an active process of self-elimination. Further auxiliary approaches, among them arbitrary rightness, rigid self-control and cynicism, serve to keep up an artificial harmony. A second part describes what unresolved conflicts cost: fears, impoverishment of the personality, hopelessness and sadistic trends. The conclusion holds that neurotic conflicts cannot be resolved by rational decision, but only by changing the inner conditions that brought them about. Against what she calls the pessimism of Freud's psychology, Horney affirms that a person can change and go on changing as long as they live.
- 1950
Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization
Horney's last book gives the most complete statement of her theory of neurosis, built on the opposition between the real self and an idealized self. Under adverse conditions a person abandons the real self for an idealized self. From this follows the search for glory. It brings neurotic claims, the tyranny of the should, neurotic pride and self-hate, and with them alienation from the self. Horney describes three main solutions to the conflicts this produces: the expansive, the self-effacing and the resigned. They continue the moving against, toward and away from people of her earlier work. Therapy is framed as freeing the forces of self-realization.
See also
People
References
- Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis1945Evidence for a relation
- Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization1950Evidence for a relation