Book
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.
Main ideas
- Neuroses are generated by disturbances in human relationships, not by instinct; the libido theory is no longer tenable.
- The neurotic trends fall into three attitudes, moving toward, against and away from people, each overstressing helplessness, hostility or isolation.
- The clash of these attitudes, the basic conflict, is the dynamic centre of neurosis, and unlike Freud's conflict it can be resolved.
- The idealized image, the chief attempt at solution, makes the conflicting trends appear as aspects of a rich personality.
- Externalization, experiencing inner processes as if outside oneself, is wider than projection and amounts to self-elimination.
- Unresolved conflicts cost fears, impoverishment of personality, hopelessness and sadistic trends.
- Conflicts are resolved not by rational decision but by changing the inner conditions that produced them; a person can go on changing throughout life.
What it shows
- 1937
Karen Horney introduced Basic anxiety
Horney named basic anxiety in The Neurotic Personality of Our Time and kept it as the starting point of her later theory of neurosis.
- 1939
Karen Horney introduced Neurotic trends
Horney proposed the term in New Ways in Psychoanalysis as a counterpart to Freud's instinctual drives, and in Our Inner Conflicts regrouped the trends into moving toward, against and away from people.
- 1945
Karen Horney introduced Idealized image
- 1950
Karen Horney introduced Tyranny of the should
The shoulds appear in Our Inner Conflicts as a sign of the gap between the idealized image and the actual self; Neurosis and Human Growth names them the tyranny of the should and gives them a chapter.
- 1945
Karen Horney introduced Real self
The real self is set against the idealized image in Our Inner Conflicts and becomes the centre of Neurosis and Human Growth, whose chapter on alienation from self treats neurosis as estrangement from it.
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Neurotic trends derives from Basic anxiety
Horney presents the neurotic trends as the child's ways of securing safety against basic anxiety, each of the three later attitudes stressing one of its elements.
Idealized image 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.
Tyranny of the should derives from Idealized image
The shoulds are the demands by which the neurotic tries to close the gap between the idealized image and the actual self.
Real self opposes Idealized image
Horney defines the two against each other: the more the idealized image takes hold, the more the real self is dimmed.
Idealized image 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.
Erich Fromm influenced Karen Horney
Horney credited Fromm with sharpening her sense of the cultural and social determinants of neurosis.