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 BSK, 1997
Terminological correction by V. Danchenko
K.: PSYLIB, 2006
Preface to the Russian edition
Karen Horney (1885-1952) is one of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers of the twentieth century. Having received medical education at the universities of Freiburg, Göttingen and Berlin, she began her personal analysis with Karl Abraham in 1910, and in 1920 she 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 attract the attention it deserved, but since its republication (1967) as a collection under common name"The Psychology of Women", Horney is considered a seminal figure in feminist psychoanalysis.
In 1932, Horney accepted Franz Alexander's invitation to become the second director of the newly created Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, but in 1934 she moved to New York to work at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Under the influence of new social and intellectual trends in the USA, she published two books - “The Neurotic Personality of Our Time” (1937) and “New Paths in Psychoanalysis” (1939), in which some of the fundamental tenets of Freudian theory are rejected, and its biological orientation is replaced by cultural and interpersonal. These books so shocked Horney's orthodox colleagues that they forced her to resign from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. In this phase of her scientific research, Horney joined the neo-Freudians of the cultural branch 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, in a more spiritually close atmosphere, continued to develop her theory. In Self-Analysis (1942), Our Inner Conflicts (1945), and Neurosis and Personal Growth (1950), she postulated that the individual copes with the anxiety that comes from lack of security, love, and recognition by refusing from his true feelings and invents artificial defense strategies for himself, both intrapsychic and interpersonal.
Horney's ideas went through several stages in their development, and therefore her name means different things to different people. Some people see her as a woman whose scientific works brilliantly anticipated all the objections to Freud's views on the psychology of women. To others she is a neo-Freudian belonging to the culturalist school. And some identify her with her mature theory, which is a thoughtful classification of defense strategies. Every stage of Horney's work is important, but I think it is her mature theory that represents the most significant contribution to the current of psychoanalytic thought. Most of her early ideas were revised or expanded - by Horney herself or others - or merged into the work of the next generation, and sometimes were rediscovered by them. But with her mature theory the situation is different. “Our Internal Conflicts” and “Neurosis and Personal Growth” explain human behavior within the framework of the existing this moment constellations of it internal conflicts and protection We will not find anything like this deep, extremely promising interpretation in other authors. It gives great opportunities not only to the clinician, but also to the literary and cultural critic; it can be used in political psychology, philosophy, religion, biography and solving problems of gender-role identification.
Although each of Horney's works is a notable contribution to science and therefore deserves attention, Neurosis and Personal Growth remains the main one. This book builds on her early work and greatly develops the ideas contained therein. Horney is renowned for her clarity of writing, 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 issues of penis envy, female masochism, and female development, and attempted to replace the dominant phallocentric view of female psychology with a different, feminine view. Initially, she tried to change psychoanalysis from the inside, but in the end 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 have only her own biological constitution and developmental patterns, which should be considered based on the female beginnings, and not as different from men's, and not as products of their supposed inferiority in comparison with men's. She challenged the psychoanalytic approach to women as inferior to men, considering this approach a consequence of the gender of its creator, a masculine genius, and the fruit of a culture in which the masculine principle took over. The existing male views on women were adopted 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 particular perspective. She argues that men's envy of pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, women's breasts and the opportunity to feed them gives rise to an unconscious tendency to devalue all this, and that the male creative impulse serves as an overcompensation for his minor role in the process of reproduction. “Womb envy” in a man is undoubtedly stronger than “penis envy” in a woman, since a man wants to belittle the importance of a woman much more than a woman wants to belittle the importance of a man.
In subsequent articles, Horney continued to analyze the male view of women in order to show the lack of scientific knowledge. In her article “Distrust Between the Sexes” (1931), she argues that women are seen as “second-class creatures” because “at all times, the more powerful side 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 to a boy's fear that his genitals are inadequate to his mother's. A woman threatens a man not with castration, but with humiliation, she threatens “masculine self-respect.” Growing up, a man continues to worry deep down about the size of his penis and 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 puts forward an ideal of productivity, seeks sexual “victories” or seeks to humiliate the object of his love.
Horney does not deny that women are often jealous of men and dissatisfied with their feminine 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, the desire to be a man and refusal from the role of a woman." She initially believed that a woman's masculinity complex was inevitable because it was necessary to avoid the feelings of guilt and anxiety that are a product of the Oedipus situation, but she subsequently revised her opinion. The masculinity complex is a product of male dominance in culture and characteristic features the girl's family dynamics, Horney argued.
"IN real life a girl from birth is doomed to become convinced of her inferiority, whether this is expressed rudely or subtly. This situation constantly stimulates her masculinity complex" ("Leaving Femininity").
Speaking about family dynamics, Horney at first considered the most important relationship between the girl and the men of the family, but later the mother became the central figure in the case histories of women who suffered from a masculinity complex. In "Mother's Conflicts" (1933), she lists all those features of a girl's childhood that she considers responsible for her masculinity complex.
"Here's what's typical: girls, as a rule, had reasons very early to dislike their own women's World. The reasons for this could be maternal intimidation, deep disappointment in relationships with her father or brother, early sexual experience that horrified the girl, or parental favoritism towards her brother.”
All this happened in Karen Horney’s childhood.
In her works on female psychology, Horney gradually moved away from Freud's belief: “anatomy is destiny” and increasingly identified cultural factors as the source of women's problems and problems of gender-role identification. No, it’s not the male’s penis that the woman envy, but the man’s privileges. What she really needs is not a penis, but the opportunity to exercise 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 "primordial relationship between masochism and the female organism." This belief of some psychoanalysts merely reflects the stereotypes of masculine culture, while Horney traces a number of social conditions, making 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 women's development than others.
Although Horney devoted much of her professional life to women's psychology, she abandoned the topic in 1935, believing that the role of culture in shaping the female psyche was too great for us to make clear distinctions between this and that. In a lecture entitled “Woman's Fear of Action” (1935), Horney expressed the belief that we can only understand what the psychological difference between women and men is when women free themselves 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 complete development of the personality of each person." After this, she began to develop her theory, which she believed to be gender-neutral, applicable to both men and women.
II. Break with Freud
In the thirties, Horney published two books. "The Neurotic Personality of Our Time" (1937) and "New Paths in Psychoanalysis" (1939), which led to the psychoanalytic community "excommunicating" her from psychoanalysis. In both books she criticized Freud's theory and put forward her own.
One of the main features of Horney's work at this time was his 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 USA and realizing the differences between this country and 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 an incorrect assumption about the universality of feelings, attitudes and attitudes inherent in his culture. Without taking into account 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 towards the production of all these types of character. Following Malinowski and others, Horney views the Oedipus complex as a culturally determined phenomenon, the extent of which can be significantly reduced through social change.
Freud considers neurosis to be a product of the clash between culture and instinct, but Horney disagrees. According to Freud, we need culture to survive and, in order to preserve it, we must suppress or sublimate our instincts. And since our happiness consists in the complete and immediate satisfaction of our instincts, we must choose between happiness and survival. Horney does not believe that this clash between the individual and society is inevitable. A collision occurs when an unfavorable environment frustrates our emotional needs and thereby arouses fear and hostility. Freud portrays man as insatiable, destructive and antisocial, but according to Horney, these are all neurotic reactions to unfavorable conditions rather than the expression of instincts.
Although Horney is often considered a representative of the cultural school, the emphasis on culture was only a passing phase of her work. A more important part of her work in the thirties was the new version of the structure of neurosis, which she first presented 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 a child’s life in a family where he does not feel safe, loved and valued. As a result, he develops "basic anxiety" - a feeling of helplessness in the face of a hostile world, which he tries to mitigate by developing defensive strategies such as the pursuit of love, the desire for power, or alienation. Because 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 fail because they create a vicious circle: the means we want to alleviate anxiety, instead, increases it. For example, frustration of the need for love makes this need insatiable, and the demandingness and jealousy resulting 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 reject 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 man who is dying of hunger but does not dare eat anything for fear that the food is poisoned."
Horney devotes most of The Neurotic Personality to an analysis of the neurotic need for love, but she also dwells on the desire for power, prestige and possession that develops when a person despairs of achieving love. These neurotic tendencies are a 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 more than one defense strategy.
“A person simultaneously feels an imperative pull to rule over everyone and be loved by everyone, he is drawn to give in to everyone and to impose his will on everyone, to get away from people and beg them for friendship.” As a result, “he is torn apart by insoluble conflicts, which are often the dynamic center of neurosis.”
Thus, Horney's early books developed a paradigm for the structure of neuroses, according to which disturbances in human relationships generate basic anxiety, which leads to the development of defense strategies that, firstly, cancel themselves out, and secondly, come with each other in conflict. The Neurotic Personality of Our Time developed the theme of the pursuit of love and dominance, but also touched on the theme of alienation; in the book 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-depreciation, self-reproach, neurotic suffering, and over-compliance with standards, but their content was more fully revealed 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 the patient's present. If Freud's focus was on the genesis of neurosis, Horney's focus was on its structure. She believed that psychoanalysis should focus attention not so much on the infantile roots of neurosis, but 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 for those who were mainly interested in the patient's past.
In her work “New Paths in Psychoanalysis,” Horney distinguished the evolutionist approach from the “mechanical evolutionist” approach. Evolutionist thinking assumes that "what exists today did not exist in this form originally, but assumed it in stages. In these previous stages we may find very little resemblance to the present form, but the present form is inconceivable without the previous ones." Mechanically, evolutionist thinking insists that “nothing really new was created in the process of development,” and “what we see today is only old in a new package.” For Horney, the deep influence of early childhood experiences does not exclude subsequent development, while for Freud, nothing new happens to 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 mechanical-evolutionist aspect of Freud's thinking was reflected in his idea of the absence of time in the unconscious, in his understanding of repetition compulsion, fixation, regression and transference. Horney considers this aspect of Freud's thinking responsible "for the extent to which a person's tendencies 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. Fears, desires or holistic experiences repressed in childhood are not subject to any influence from further experiences that appear as a person grows older. This allows us to build the concept of fixation - either in relation to a 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 a person’s further attachments 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, different from the mechanistic one, is that in the process of organic development there are never 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 a path on which “each step entails the next.” Thus, “interpretations that link the difficulties of the present directly to the influence of childhood are scientifically only half the truth, and practically useless.”
According to Horney's model, early experiences influence us so deeply not because they create fixations that force a person to reproduce infantile stereotypes, but because they determine our attitude towards the world. Subsequent experiences also influence our attitude towards the world, and this ultimately results in 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 everyone previous interactions between his psyche and the environment.
There is another important difference between Horney and Freud. Freud believed that these decisive childhood experiences were relatively few and mainly of a sexual nature, while Horney believed that the totality of childhood experiences was responsible for neurotic development. The life of an adult goes awry because in childhood the entire culture surrounding him, his relationships with peers and especially family relationships made the child feel unprotected, unloved and unwanted, and this gave rise to basic anxiety in him. These unfavorable conditions provide the basis for the development of a special character structure, and from it all further difficulties flow.
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 a symptom within the framework 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 "concentrate on the forces that now move or hinder a person; there is a fair chance that we will be able to understand them, even without knowing very much about his childhood."
III. Horney's mature theory
In New Paths in Psychoanalysis, Horney talks about the distortion of the “immediate I person", coming 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 proposed the term "authentic I" (real self) in the article "Are We in the Right Place?" (1935) and used it again in "Self-Analysis" (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 potential, and neurotic development, in which he is alienated from his true self. 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 the real or genuine I.*
* So "genuine" or "real"? The word "authentic" allows us to immediately intuitively grasp 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 fundamental philosophical training) and needs additional clarification. I hope these clarifications will also help to understand the reasons for my translation choice in favor of the “authentic self”.
Developing a language to describe 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”. Wherein psychological concept“real” includes at least four substantive aspects: ontological (“essential”), epistemological (“objective”), value (“genuine”) and practical (“feasible”).
In other words, Horney's "real self" 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 traits; 2) a set of objective traits, 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 traits - in contrast to the “ideal self”, which may include false, false traits; 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 is concerned with considering all four of these aspects, the most significant for her as a psychotherapist is 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 not at all an indication of their “insignificance,” “bias,” or “impracticability.” – V.D.
Genuine I- not a fixed structure, but a set of “inherent 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, since no one can be taught to be himself; but this is not something that is not susceptible to external influences, since actualization, the embodiment of the genuine I in reality is carried out through interaction with the outside world, which provides various paths of development. This process can go in different ways, depending on certain circumstances. However, in order for self-realization to take place at all, a person requires certain conditions in childhood. These include a “warm atmosphere” that allows the child to express his own thoughts and feelings, the good will of loved ones to meet his various needs, and “a healthy clash between his wishes and the wills of others.”
When the parent's neurosis prevents them from loving the child or even thinking about him "as a separate, original person," the child develops a basal anxiety that prevents him from "relating to other people directly, as his real feelings suggest, and forces him to look for other ways handling them." Feelings and behavior are no longer the child's genuine self-expression, but are dictated by defense strategies. "It can go towards people, against people or away from them."
Horney's mature theory contains descriptions of these strategies and a thoughtful classification of them. If in “Our Inner Conflicts” she addresses our interpersonal strategies and the conflicts they generate, in “Neurosis and Personal Growth” she gives a full account of intrapsychic defenses and their connections with 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 be understood "only as a process in which interpersonal conflicts give rise to particular intrapsychic configurations which, being dependent, from previous stereotypes of human relations, in turn change them." However, she neglects her own warning by focusing primarily on intrapsychic factors, which creates problems for the reader. Since intrapsychic constructs are the result of interpersonal conflicts, it is more logical to begin presenting the theory with them. This is how “Our Internal Conflicts” is structured, 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 decisions made on an interpersonal level from intrapsychic decisions. I would like to carry out a synthesis of her two latest works in order to “clear the way” for the reader to more quickly perceive “Neurosis and Personal Growth.”
Trying to cope with the feeling of “nobody loves me”, with feelings of insecurity and uselessness that give rise to basic anxiety, a person can decide on humility or agreement and start moving to people; may make an aggressive or expansive decision and start moving against people; or decide to alienate, leave from people. Horney introduced the terms accommodation, aggression, withdrawal in "Our Inner 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 has no alternative. Each of the three solutions includes a certain constellation of behavioral stereotypes and personality traits, a concept of justice and a set of beliefs, ideas about human nature, universal values and human living conditions. It also includes a “bargain with fate”, which implies a reward for submission 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 aggressive decision; isolation in the decision to leave. Since all three of these feelings (helplessness, hostility, isolation) invariably arise in conditions that produce basic 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 generally submissive, 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 forms and in roundabout ways. The conflict between tendencies was not resolved, it was simply driven underground. When “underground” tendencies for some reason approach the surface, a person feels severe inner anxiety, which sometimes paralyzes him, preventing him from moving 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” and “learned a lot,” but this is just replacing one defense with another.
Someone who is dominated by humility tries to overcome his basic anxiety by seeking favor and approval and establishing control over others through their need and interest in him. He strives to bind others to himself with his weakness, love, compliance, and kindness. Since he simultaneously needs to be at the mercy of someone and needs to be able to safely express his aggressive tendencies, he is often attracted to the opposite, expansive type of person: through him he can participate in the mastery of life. Such relationships often develop into “painful dependence,” in which a crisis ensues 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 “lie in the area of kindness, pity, love, generosity, dedication, humility; while conceit, ambition, callousness, dishonesty, and domineering 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 defense system. They are forced to believe in "turning the other cheek" and that there is a providential order in the world and that virtue will ultimately triumph. Their deal is that if they are humble, loving, avoid pride and do not seek fame, fate and other people will be merciful to them. If fate is unwilling to honor this bargain, they either despair of divine justice, or come to the conclusion that they are guilty, or begin to believe in a 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, and therefore are very sensitive to disappointments in this area.
In a person of the humble type, Horney writes, “many of his aggressive aspirations 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 entire strategy for achieving love, justice, protection and approval. Thus, the strategy leads to increased hostility, since “humility and kindness tempt them to step on their toes,” and “dependence on others contributes to exceptional vulnerability.” The rage bubbling in the depths of the soul of such people threatens their self-image, their philosophy of life, their bargain with fate; it must be repressed, disguised or justified - in order to avoid growing self-hatred and hostility towards others.
The goals, character traits and values of those in whom the expansive tendency has prevailed are directly opposite to all of the above for the “humble and compliant”. It is not love that attracts them, but dominance. They are disgusted by helplessness, they are ashamed of suffering and need success, a prestigious position, and recognition. As we have already seen, the solutions called acquiescence, aggression and withdrawal in "Our Inner Conflicts" and in "Neurosis and Personal Growth" become resignation, capture and alienation ("retirement"). Because she divides the expansion decision into the narcissistic, perfectionist (need for perfection) and revenge decisions, we have five major decisions instead of three. She did not address narcissism and perfectionism in Our Inner Conflicts, so the "aggressive solution" can be considered the equivalent of the "revenge solution" described in Neurosis and Personal Growth.
Narcissistic people strive to dominate life by “admiring themselves and charming others.” They often grow up to be gifted, beloved children who were greatly admired. Having become adults, they consider the world to be their breadwinner, and themselves to be the darlings of fate. They believe in their talents without a shadow of a doubt and believe that no one can resist them. Their insecurity manifests itself in incessant stories of their exploits or remarkable qualities and in the need to receive endless confirmation of their self-worth in the form of admiration and worship. Their deal is that if only they hold on to their dreams and exaggerated demands on themselves, life will definitely give them everything they desire. If this does not happen, they may experience psychological collapse because they are ill-prepared to face reality.
The standards of one who strives for absolute perfection are extremely high, both in the field of morality and in the field of intelligence. He looks at everyone else from the heights of these standards. He is extremely proud of his “correctness” and his goal is “impeccability” in all respects. It is very difficult to live by such standards, so he strives to equalize knowledge about moral values and their implementation. In this way he tries to deceive himself and therefore often insists that others live according to his standards and despises them for not doing so, thereby externalizing his self-judgment. Imposing your standards on others leads to the fact that the admirer of perfection admires a select few, and treats the majority of humanity critically and arrogantly. His deal has a “legal” connotation: for his honesty, fairness and devotion to duty, he is awarded “fair treatment of all people and life in general. This conviction of the inviolable justice of life gives him a sense of power over life.” By the height of his standards, he subjugates fate. His own failure or mistake threatens the deal and therefore fills him with feelings of helplessness or self-hatred.
Vengeful people are driven primarily by the need for evil triumph. While the narcissistic type was basked in childhood admiration and the perfectionist grew up under the pressure of rigid norms, the revenge-seeking person was abused in childhood and has a need to repay all the insults inflicted on him. He considers the world "an arena where, as Darwin said, the fittest survive and the strong destroy the weak." The only moral law inherent in the nature of things is “right on the side of might.” In his relationships with others, he is competitive, ruthless and cynical. He doesn't trust anyone, avoids emotional involvement, and looks to use others to enhance his sense of dominance. He treats humble people like they are fools, but despite this, he is drawn to them because of their compliance and humility.
The compromising (or humble) type is forced to repress his hostility so that his decision can work, and similarly, for the vindictive person, “any feeling of pity, or the need to be “good”, or an attitude of concession would be incompatible with the general picture of his life, built by him, and would shake its foundations." He wants to be firm, tough and treats all manifestations of feelings as a sign of weakness. He fears danger from his acquiescent tendencies, because they would make him vulnerable in a hostile world, turn his attention to self-hatred, and threaten his essential bargain. He does not expect the world to give him anything - he is convinced that he will achieve his ambitious goals only if he remains true to his view of life as a battle, and does not allow himself to be influenced by traditional morality or his own softness. If his decision to take over the world collapses, he tends to hate himself.
The one whose main strategy is to leave people does not pursue either love or dominance, but worships freedom, peace and self-sufficiency. He despises the pursuit of worldly success and has a deep aversion to any effort. He has a strong need for superiority and usually looks down on his fellows, but realizes his ambition more in imagination than in actual achievement. He controls the threatening world, removing himself from its power and throwing others out of his inner life. To avoid dependence on the environment, he tries to subjugate his inner impulses and be content with little. He usually does not scold life, but submits to the course of things, such as it is, and accepts his fate with irony or stoic dignity. His deal is that if he himself does not ask people for anything, then people will not bother him; if he does not strive for anything, then he will not fail; will not expect anything and will not be disappointed.
By alienating himself from people, he alienates himself from himself, and he does this by suppressing or denying his feelings and internal conflicts. His withdrawal from active life puts him in the position of a spectator, which allows him to be an excellent observer, both of other people and of his own internal processes. But his self-understanding is separated from emotions, he “looks at himself detachedly, like a work of art, with a certain objective interest.”
In Neurosis and Personal Growth, Horney describes childhood experiences that typify each of the major strategies adopted later. However, the experience of most children is not “typical”, but is a certain combination of experiences, and therefore adults do not have a “typical” defense, but a combination of them, a combination. Conflicts between defenses give rise to hesitation, inconsistency, and self-hatred. The significance of Horney's theory is that it allows us to understand a person's contradictory attitudes, behavior and beliefs as part of the structure of his internal conflicts. When considering the classification of defenses carried out by Horney, it is important to remember that it speaks about the situation at some point, about the time slice of dynamics: solutions are combined, come into conflict, weaken or strengthen, they themselves need protection, starting a “vicious circle”, and are replaced upon their failure.
While interpersonal difficulties generate movement towards people, against people and away from people, as well as conflict between these directions of movement, intrapsychic problems accompanying interpersonal problems produce their own defense strategies. To compensate for our feelings of weakness, worthlessness and inadequacy, we create, with the help of our imagination, an “ideal image of ourselves” and endow it with unlimited strength, power and incredible abilities.
The process of self-idealization should be considered in interaction with interpersonal strategies, since the ideal image is strongly influenced by the main defense strategy, which extols certain personal qualities. The ideal self-image of the humble type is “a set of wonderful qualities such as kindness, lack of selfishness, generosity, pliability, holiness, nobility, compassion.” But in addition to sensitivity to art, nature and people, “helplessness, suffering and martyrdom” are also glorified. Vengeful people see themselves as invincible in any situation. They are smarter, more persistent and more realistic than others and therefore can achieve more. They pride themselves on their vigilance, ability to anticipate and plan, and believe that nothing can get to them. The narcissistic person is “the anointed one, the finger of God, the prophet, the benefactor of mankind, the man of destiny, for he is destined to give something great to people.” He imagines that his energy is inexhaustible, that he is capable of unlimited achievements, and completely without effort. A perfectionist sees himself as perfect in every way. He does everything excellently, no matter what he undertakes, he judges absolutely correctly anything, he is fair and faithful to duty in any relationship with people. The ideal image of the “retired” is “a fusion of self-sufficiency, independence, inner peace, freedom from passions and desires” and stoic indifference to “the slings and arrows of furious fate.” They strive to be free from shackles and immune to pressure. With any type of decision, the ideal image of oneself can be sewn partly according to a religious, partly according to a cultural pattern, or can be taken from history or personal experience.
An ideal self-image ultimately does not improve our attitude towards ourselves, but rather leads to increased self-hatred and additional internal conflicts. Although the qualities with which we endow ourselves are dictated by our main interpersonal strategy, repressed decisions also have a say; and since each decision celebrates a different set of personality traits, different aspects of the ideal self-image conflict with each other, and each of them fights for the right to be embodied in reality. Worse, because the only way to feel worth something is becoming with its ideal, everything that “falls short” of it is felt as worthless; This is how the “despicable self-image” grows, which becomes the target of self-criticism. A lot of people, Horney writes, “oscillate between a sense of arrogant omnipotence and a feeling that they are the last scum.” While the ideal self-image is constructed according to the main interpersonal strategy, the despised self-image most strongly reflects the repressed strategy. As we convince ourselves that we really are the great person or the rubbish we imagine ourselves to be, the ideal self-image develops into the ideal I, and the opposite - into the despicable I.
Horney bases his reasoning on four of our I: genuine (or possible) I, ideal (or impossible) I, despicable I and cash I. Genuine I- not a fixed structure, but a set of biological prerequisites that can be translated into reality only in interaction with the environment. The degree and form of its implementation largely depends on external conditions, including from culture. Under unfavorable conditions, contact with genuine I the ideal image of oneself is lost and grows, just as unrealistically grandiose as the unrealistically disgusting and weak despicable image of oneself. Cash I- this is the person we are, and strength and weakness, health and neurosis are mixed in him. Distance between cash and authentic I depends on how much our development was self-realization, and how much self-alienation.
With the formation of an ideal image of ourselves, we set off “in pursuit of glory,” since our “energy, which attracts self-realization, is intercepted by another goal - to embody the ideal in reality.” I". What exactly will be considered “glorious” depends on the chosen solution. Horney does not consider the search for the absolute inherent in human nature. We have the ability to imagine and plan, we always strive to rise above ourselves, but a healthy person at the same time reaches out to the possible and works to achieve a goal within the limits of human limitations. For a self-alienated person, it is only "all or nothing", and for him the pursuit of fame is often the most important thing in life. It gives meaning to his life, gives him a sense of superiority to which he so hopelessly strives. “We have good reason to wonder,” writes Horney, “whether the majority human lives(figuratively or literally) precisely on the altar of glory?" The pursuit of fame turns into a "personal religion", the rules of which are determined by the neurosis of the individual, but at the same time a person may also believe in and participate in the system of glorification that exists in his culture rituals. Such systems exist in every culture and include conventional religion, various shapes group identification, war and military service, competitions, insignia and all sorts of hierarchical devices.
The creation of an ideal image of oneself gives rise not only to the pursuit of fame, but also to a certain structure of a phenomenon called “pride” by Horney. Pride, turning into arrogance, becomes an attribute of the ideal I, and from this intoxication with one’s own “high” position, neurotic demands are made on others. At the same time, a person believes that he must act in accordance with his majestic ideas about himself. If the world refuses to respect neurotic demands, or if the person possessed by pride does not live in something “as it should,” he identifies himself with the despicable I and experiences withering self-hatred. As with the ideal self-image, special nature pride, various shoulds, demands and self-hatred are influenced by our main decision and conflicts between it and subordinate tendencies.
Ideally I neurotic pride takes the place of realistic self-confidence and self-esteem. Threats to pride cause anxiety and hostility; her downfall is despair and “gnawing” at herself. There are various sources for its restoration. This is retribution, which returns a sense of superiority to the humiliated, and a complete loss of interest in what threatens pride. This also includes various forms of distortion, such as forgetting humiliating episodes, denying one's responsibility, blaming others, and embellishing. Sometimes “humor helps remove the sting of unbearable shame.”
Pride makes us make neurotic demands on the world and others. The specifics of these demands depend on our main decision, but in any case, we believe that fate is obliged to respect our deal with it, and we must get what we need in order for our decision to stand. Neurotic demands are “overflowing with the expectation of a miracle.” When life does not answer them, we fall into despair, into furious indignation, or deny the reality that has hit us. If the sad experience is repeated, our decision may change, but it may remain in force. At the same time, the person continues to hold on to the demands even more, as a “guarantee of future glory.” Our demands increase our vulnerability because their frustration threatens to turn us back into the feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy from which they stem.
From the "pursuit of glory" we can now turn to what Horney calls the "tyranny of the Should." "Should" forces us to live in accordance with the majestic idea of ourselves. These “Shoulds” are a product of the ideal self-image, and since the ideal self-image for the most part is glorification decision taken(acquiesce, strive for absolute perfection, revenge, resign, or narcissistic), therefore, the different “Shoulds” are determined mainly by the character traits and values associated with the main defense. However, subordinate tendencies are also represented in the ideal self-image, and as a result we often find ourselves “caught in the crossfire of warring shoulds.” We try to obey contradictory internal orders and are doomed to hate ourselves for everything we do, and even if, paralyzed by these conflicts, we do nothing. It is impossible to live “as we should” not only because we must be pulled in different directions, but also because they are unrealistic: we must love everyone, we must never make mistakes, we must always emerge victorious, we must never need anyone... Many externalizations are associated with the Need. We feel our Should as “they Should” (as an expectation directed at others), our self-hatred as their rejection, our “self-criticism” as their unjust condemnation. We expect others to live according to our “how to” and pour out our rage on them for our own unsuccessful attempt live like this. The need developed to protect against self-loathing only intensifies the disease that it was intended to heal. “The threat of punishment through self-hatred” turns “into a regime of terror.”
Must is the basis for a deal with fate. It doesn’t matter what decision was made: the deal is that our demands will be met if we live “as we should.” By obeying internal rules, we establish control over external reality. We, of course, see our demands not as something exorbitant, but only as what we have a right to expect, given our greatness, and we consider life unfair when our expectations are not realized. Our sense of justice is determined by our main decision and the transaction associated with it.
Self-hatred - final product intrapsychic defense strategies, each of which tends to increase our sense of failure and worthlessness. Self-hatred is essentially rage, which is ideal I feels for cash I because it is not “as it should be”. Self-hatred is mostly unconscious because it is too painful to face openly. The main defense against it is externalization, which can be active or passive. Active is “an attempt to redirect hatred from the inside out: against life, destiny, institutions or people.” With passive, “hatred remains inwardly directed, but is perceived or experienced as coming from without.” When self-hatred is conscious, it is often tinged with pride, which serves to support self-glorification: “Even the condemnation of imperfections confirms the divine standards with which the person identifies himself.” Horney views self-hatred as " greatest tragedy human consciousness. In his striving for the Infinite and Absolute, man begins to destroy himself. By making a deal with Satan, who promises him glory, he is forced to go to hell - to hell within himself."
IV. Applicability of Horney's theory
Because of the title of her first book, Horney's theory is often considered a description of the neurotic personality of her time, that is, the upper-middle class New Yorker of the thirties and forties. This view stems, it seems to me, from the increased attention to her early work, which focused on culture, and from the lack of attention to her mature theory, applicable to many societies, both modern and historical. The defenses described by Horney take different forms in different societies, and different societies favor different defense strategies and promote different patterns of internal conflict; but movement towards people, against people or from people is, apparently, part of human nature, and not a product of culture. In fact, a behaviorist would recognize them as a sophisticated, human version of the animal's basic defense mechanisms: submission, fight and flight. The source of these defense mechanisms is instinct, and this is perhaps one of the reasons why Horney's theory can be applied to a wide variety of cultures.
I have come to recognize its broad applicability through my work as a teacher and literary critic. I have had students from many countries, from all walks of life, who have stated that Horney's theory applies to them, their people, culture and literature. I myself have used it in my work - to analyze authors and their works, relating not only to any period of British and American literature (including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton and many short story writers), but also belonging to Russian, French, German, Spanish, Norwegian and Swedish literature of different centuries, as well as ancient Greek and Roman literature. As far as I know, Horney's theory was also used in the study of Chinese, Japanese, and Indian literature.
That Horney's theory is useful to biographers also speaks to its depth and power. There are Hornian works on Robert Frost, Charles Evans Hughes, the Kennedy family, Stalin, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, Felix Frankfurter, Lyndon Johnson; and a number of other prominent public figures and writers can be largely understood in the light of this approach. A good example Robert Tucker's work on Stalin might serve the purpose.
Tucker was working at the American Embassy in Moscow in 1950 when Neurosis and Personal Growth was published. After reading the book, he was “struck by a sudden thought”: “What if the ideal image of Stalin, portrayed day after day in the Soviet press under party control, is his ideal image of himself in Horney’s sense?” If so, “the cult of Stalin must reflect his own monstrously inflated idea of himself as a genius of all times and peoples.” This Kremlin recluse, “so discreetly silent about himself in public, simply must spill out his secret thoughts about himself in millions of newspapers and magazines distributed throughout Russia.” You can psychoanalyze Stalin “just by reading Pravda!”
Tucker is convinced that books about totalitarianism, like Hannah Arendt's, "suffer from a serious flaw - there is neither a dictator nor his psychodynamics in the picture." The dictator is able to "make political institutions internal defenses of his ideal I, always exposed to threats,” and “to mobilize the apparatus of repression for revenge not only on people whom he saw as enemies, but also on entire “enemy” social strata.” The disaster “was, apparently, Hitler’s acting out of vindictive hostility stemming from neurotic hatred to itself, projected onto the Jews as a group."
Tucker's assumptions about the role of Stalin's personality in Soviet politics were confirmed after Stalin's death. Tucker believed that Stalin's self-idealization extended to Soviet people in general, and therefore he refused exit visas to the wives of foreigners, since their desire to leave was an “insult” to the country and to him personally. He therefore predicted that his Russian wife would be allowed to leave after Stalin's death. This and other predictions based on his work turned out to be correct. After Stalin's death, the atmosphere of terror dissipated, the terrible purges stopped, cold war began to decline and the cult of personality ended.
Despite the accuracy of Tucker's predictions, historians still resist the idea that such profound changes occurred during Stalin's lifetime. "due to the action of a psychological factor." However, Tucker's interpretation of Stalin's personality and its political significance was confirmed by Khrushchev's secret report "On the cult of personality and its consequences."
"Khrushchev portrayed Stalin as a man with colossal pretensions and deep self-doubt, which made him crave constant confirmation of his imaginary greatness. The picture he painted is completely in the spirit of Horney: before us is a portrait of an arrogant-vindictive type of personality straight out of Neurosis and Personal Growth "Self-idealizing, insatiably hungry for the glorification that the cult provided him, Stalin easily fell into vindictive hostility to what seemed to him the slightest deviation from his inflamed image of himself as a brilliant Leader and Teacher. His aggression, typified by the purges ,... was reverse side his self-glorification."
Having received confirmation of his hypothesis, Tucker continued his work, two volumes of which were published: “Stalin the Revolutionary” (1973) and “The Power of Stalin” (1990). His interpretations of the extremely destructive behavior of this complex and contradictory personality were very successful.
Many authors have applied Horney's theory to analyze American culture. David M. Potter published the book "People of Affluence: Economic Excess and the American Character" in 1954. The book is heavily influenced by Horney's analysis of character traits, internal conflicts, and the vicious circles created by the competitiveness of American culture. He links them to the effects of abundance, observing with concern that increasing abundance "means an increase in the reward of competition," and an increase in reward means an increase in the premium for being able to compete. This brings with it increased aggressiveness, which creates internal conflicts and does not bring positive results. We trade security for opportunity. high award and then experience the anxiety that comes with insecurity. We are drawn to participate in competition at the cost of neurosis, “because society itself views the reward as something irresistible and inevitably forces everyone to rush after it.”
In Poverty of Wealth: A Psychological Portrait of the American Way of Life (1989), Paul Wachtel also notes that “there is something convulsive, irrational and self-destructive” in the American pursuit of ever-increasing prosperity. Without suggesting that the entire population is neurotically aggressive, Wachtel believes that Horney, in describing the tendency to go against people, "captured something important in the obvious stereotypes of behavior that are most characteristic" of public life America and the workings of its economic system: “We are proud to be a big, strong and prosperous nation, and we value the same in our heroes.” Americans support competition rather than mutual support, and "strive to conquer and conquer" nature and others. The country fears that it will be seen "as a colossus with feet of clay" and must commit reckless acts of aggression to ward off this terrible image. Caught in a vicious cycle, Americans anxiously rely “on the production and accumulation of goods” for a sense of security and continue this strategy even though it increases their sense of insecurity.
Potter drew on "The Neurotic Personality of Our Time," and Wachtel on "Our Inner Conflicts." In the article "A Psychological Critique of American Culture," published in the American Psychoanalytic Journal (1982), James Huffman uses Horney's mature theory. But while Potter focuses on affluence, Huffman writes that what influences American behavior most is a sense of threat and a sense of inferiority. IN early period The American nation was viewed by established European states as socially and culturally inferior, and during the period of expansion, life on the frontier of settler advance was dangerous. In the cities, life followed Darwinian laws, and immigrants, usually poor and persecuted in their homeland, were again subject to discrimination, and, in addition, their new fellow citizens perceived them as a threat.
Under such pressure, compensatory defense mechanisms were developed, and as a result, much of American history was the pursuit of glory, which was reflected in the “ideal image of the American. Americans believed that the United States was going to become the greatest country in the world, and then that it's already greatest country, and so it should continue to be." In its own way, each era "restructured and embellished the myth of American superiority." Because of an exaggerated opinion of their own importance, Americans "made exaggerated demands on other nations: that they always take into account their desires, consult with them before making any decision, and treated them as judges and peacemakers of the whole planet" (1982). Like Potter and Watchell, Huffman speaks of the "aggressive struggle" that characterizes the American economy "in a much larger rather than cooperation." Americans want their leaders to be militant and glorify those who fought their way to the top. But, of course, there are tendencies in American culture that conflict with aggressive ones.
There are also Hornian analytical studies of Elizabethan and Victorian cultures. I believe that the Hornian approach will be fruitful in the study of almost any society.
Horney calls neurosis a "personal religion." She did not talk much about traditional religions, but her theory can be used to analyze them, since most of them involve the pursuit of fame and its attendant shoulds, demands, pride and self-hatred. They offer a deal with fate that promises rewards for certain beliefs, actions, gestures, rituals and character traits. Much of the Old Testament celebrates the bargain with fate of the “worshipper of perfection,” in which a person is drawn into carrying out a set of elaborate rituals and commands under a shower of threats and promises. In the New Testament the main deal is different. It is not obedience to the law, but an attitude of humility - forgiveness, faith and concessions - that will bring reward. Most religions force their followers to live up to an ideal image of themselves that varies from theology to theology, promising them glory if they succeed and punishment if they do not. Sometimes religion also includes protection from failure, which is recognized as inevitable.
Horney's analysis of religion makes it easier for us to understand and make sense of the psychological needs and defenses expressed in various doctrines and rituals. He helps us grasp the essence: what religion gives to a person, and what torment he experiences when his faith is threatened. Deprived of religion as a result of the collapse common system illusions, many of our contemporaries are forced to invent a personal neurotic solution for which there is too little conventional justification and confirmation. Although most religions are based on a magical transaction, there is a major difference between them that needs to be remembered: some religions encourage and some prohibit emotional well-being. God can be an imaginary kind parent, loving and caring, or he can be a neurotic parent who demands that we sacrifice our true selves. I for his glory.
Philosophical systems can also be worthy objects of psychological analysis, since they also serve as an expression of human desires and his defenses. Philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are very attractive to study in the Hornian spirit. Schopenhauer's main strategy is apparently withdrawal, Kierkegaard's is humility, Nietzsche's is aggression; and in each case it is interesting to see what skillful development the defense undergoes in the hands of genius. Understanding the psychological orientation of a philosophical system can help us see not only what it came from, but also the nature of its influence and the goals to which it calls. Sometimes this explains her inconsistency, which is an expression of the philosopher’s internal conflicts.
In my brief notes I could only indicate the scope and power of Karen Horney's thoughts. Her mature theory, and especially “Neurosis and Personal Growth,” is a notable contribution not only to personality theory and psychoanalytic practice, but also to cultural studies, literary studies, and the biographical genre. It was used by Marika Westcott in her research on gender role identification: The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney (1986); "The relativity of femininity and the ideal I"("American Psychoanalytic Journal, 1989). The possibilities of her theory, both in these areas and in the fields of political psychology, religion and philosophy, are only just beginning to be explored.
Dr. Bernard Paris, University of Florida,
Director of the International Society Karen Horney.
The self-destructive drive directed against the body is the easiest to observe. Physical violence against oneself is generally limited to psychoses. With neurosis, we encounter a smaller scale of self-destructive actions, which are mainly passed off as “bad habits” - nail biting, scratching, the eternal rush to get ready, hair pulling. But there are also unexpected urges to pure violence, which, in contrast to psychosis, remain in the imagination. They seem to happen to those who live in imagination to such an extent that they despise reality, including the reality of themselves. They often occur after a flash of deep insight, and the whole process proceeds with such lightning speed that its sequence can only be grasped in an analytical situation: a sudden, deeply penetrating vision of some imperfection, quickly flashing and disappearing, followed just as sharply by a mad impulse to tear out one’s eyes , cut your own throat or stick a knife into your stomach and let your guts out. This type of personality at times experiences suicidal urges (for example, he is drawn to jump from a balcony or from a cliff), urges that arise under similar conditions and seem to come from nowhere. They disappear so quickly that they hardly have a chance to come true. On the other hand, the desire to jump from a height may be unexpectedly so strong that a person is forced to grab onto something to avoid temptation. But it can also lead to a real suicide attempt. Even so, this guy still doesn't have a realistic idea of the finality of death. He rather sees himself jumping from the twentieth floor, then picking himself up off the floor and going home. It often depends on chance whether such a suicide attempt succeeds or fails. May I be allowed to say that if he saw himself dead, he himself would be more surprised than anyone else.
In many serious suicide attempts, we must be aware of the possibility of advanced self-alienation. However, as a rule, an unrealistic attitude towards death is more characteristic of suicidal impulses or interrupted suicide attempts than of planned and serious attempts on oneself. Of course, there are always many reasons for such a step, it’s just that the tendency to self-destruction is its most regular element.
Self-destructive impulses may remain unconscious as such and, however, become actualized in “desperation” when driving, swimming, climbing or in a hurry when physical capabilities do not allow haste. We have seen that such activity may not seem desperate to the person himself, since he has a hidden demand for invulnerability (“nothing can happen to me”). In many cases this is a major factor. But we must always be aware of the additional possibility of self-destructive drives, especially when disregard for real danger assumes threatening proportions.
Finally, there are those who unconsciously but systematically destroy their health through drinking or drugs, although there may be other factors at play, such as a constant need for the drug. In Stefan Zweig's essay on Balzac, we see the tragedy of a genius who, in a heartbreaking quest for fame, actually destroyed his health with hard labor, neglect of sleep and abuse of coffee. Of course, Balzac's need for fame drove him into debt to such an extent that his excessive work was partly a consequence of an unhealthy lifestyle. But, of course, here, as in similar cases, the question of the presence of self-destructive drives, which ultimately led to premature death, is justified.
In other cases, bodily harm is inflicted on oneself, so to speak, accidentally. We all know that “in a bad mood” we are more likely to cut ourselves, trip and fall, or pinch a finger. But if we don't pay attention to cars when crossing the street, or to driving rules while behind the wheel, it can be fatal.
The question remains open about the silent action of self-destructive drives in organic diseases. Although much more is now known about psychosomatic illnesses, it is difficult to highlight with due accuracy the special role of self-destructive tendencies. Of course, any good doctor knows that in a severe illness the patient’s “will” to get well and live or die is decisive. But even here the direction of psychic forces towards life or death can be determined by many factors. All that can now be said, taking into account the unity of soul and body, is that it is necessary to take seriously the possibility of silent action of self-destruction not only in the recovery phase, but also in the creation of the disease itself and in its intensification.
Self-destruction directed at others life values, may seem like an accident, an untimely coincidence. An example of this is Eilert Levborg from Hedda Gabler, who loses his precious manuscript. Ibsen shows us how self-destructive reactions and actions rapidly increase in this character. At first, following a slight suspicion of his faithful friend Fru Elvstedt, he tries to destroy his relationship with her by continuing the revelry. After getting drunk, he loses the manuscript, then shoots himself, and in the house of a prostitute. On a smaller scale, this is the case of people forgetting something on an exam, being late for an important meeting, or showing up drunk.
More often than not, the destruction of mental values amazes us with its repetition. A person quits his occupation just when something begins to work out for him. We can believe his statement that this was not what he “really” wanted. But when the process is repeated for the third, fourth, fifth time, we begin to look for what is behind it. Among the factors that determine it, self-destruction is often the main one, although hidden deeper than the rest. Without realizing it in the slightest, he is forced to miss all his chances. The same can be said when a person loses or quits one job after another, breaks off one relationship after another. In both cases, it often seems to him that he is a victim of injustice and black ingratitude. In fact, he does everything to bring upon himself with his constant bickering and pestering the very outcome that he is so afraid of. In short, he often gets his boss or friend to the point where he (or she) can't stand him anymore.
We can understand these recurring occurrences when we observe something similar in the analytic situation. The patient formally cooperates; he can even show the analyst all the signs of favor (which he does not want); nevertheless, in all essentials he behaves so provocatively and insultingly that the analyst also begins to feel sympathy for those who previously turned their backs on the patient. In short, the patient is trying (and has always tried) to force others to carry out his self-destructive intentions.
To what extent are active self-destructive tendencies responsible for the gradual destruction of personality depth and integrity? To a greater or lesser extent, grossly and subtly, the integrity of the personality is violated as a result of neurotic development. Alienation from oneself, inevitable unconscious claims, equally inevitable unconscious compromises due to unresolved conflicts, self-contempt - all these factors lead to a weakening of the moral principle, the core of which is a reduced ability to be sincere with oneself.* The question is whether a person can silently , but actively participate in their own moral and moral decline. Certain observations force us to answer in the affirmative.
* Wed. K. Horney. "Our internal conflicts." Chapter 10: “Impoverishment of Personality.”
We are seeing conditions, chronic or acute, that can best be described as despondency. A person neglects his appearance, allows himself to be unkempt, dirty and fat, he drinks too much and sleeps too little, he does not care about his health - for example, he does not go to the dentist. He eats too much or too little, does not go for walks, neglects his work or any of his serious interests, and becomes lazy. He may enter into casual relationships or prefer the company of empty or degenerate people. It may become unreliable in monetary terms, start beating your wife and children, lying or stealing. This process is most evident in advanced alcoholism, as well described in The Lost Weekend. But he can also go in very subtle and hidden ways. In transparent examples, even an untrained observer will be able to see that these people “allow themselves to go to all kinds of troubles.” Upon analysis, we realize that such a description is inadequate. This condition occurs when a person is so filled with self-contempt and hopelessness that his constructive powers can no longer resist the influence of self-destructive drives. The latter then reach full scale and are expressed in a decision (mostly unconscious) about active demoralization. In externalized form, the active, planned intention to demoralize a person is described by George Orwell in 1984; every experienced analyst will see in his novel a true picture of what a neurotic can do to himself. Dreams also indicate that he may with my own hands throw yourself into the gutter.
The neurotic's response to this internal process can be different. It could be fun, it could be self-pity, it could be fear. These reactions are usually not associated in his mind with the process of falling of his own free will.
The self-pity reaction was especially strong in one patient after her next dream. In the past, the patient had spent most of her life going with the flow; she had turned her back on ideals, becoming cynical. Although at the time of the dream she had worked hard on herself, she was not yet able to take herself seriously and do anything constructive with her life. She dreamed that a woman, the embodiment of all that is beautiful and good, was preparing to accept faith, and was accused of insulting this faith. She was convicted and publicly disgraced before some kind of procession. Although the sleeping woman was convinced of her innocence, she also took part in the procession. On the other hand, she tried to win over the priest. The priest, although sympathetic, could do nothing for the accused. Then the accused found herself on some farm, not only completely destitute, but stupefied and half insane. Even in her sleep, the patient’s heart was torn with pity for this woman, and when she woke up, she cried for several hours. With the exception of details, in this dream the dreamer seems to be saying to herself: “There is a lot of beauty and goodness in me, with my self-contempt and self-directed destructiveness I can really destroy my own personality; the measures I have taken against these drives are ineffective; although I want to save myself, I avoid the real struggle and in some way participate in the work of destructive instincts.”
In our dreams we are closer to our reality. And in particular this dream, it seems to me, rose from great depths to give the one who saw it a deep and true understanding of the danger of its inherent self-destructiveness. The self-pity reaction in this case, as in many others, at that moment was not constructive: it did not motivate her to do anything for herself. Only when hopelessness and the power of self-contempt weakens can unconstructive self-pity turn into constructive self-compassion. And it is, indeed, a step forward of the greatest significance for anyone gripped by self-hatred. It comes with the first feeling of true self and the desire for inner salvation.
The reaction to the process of sliding into the abyss can be chilling horror. And, taking into account the monstrous danger of self-destruction, this reaction is completely adequate as long as a person feels like a helpless prey to this merciless force. In dreams and associations, it can appear in the form of many expressive symbols of a murderous maniac, Dracula, monsters, the White Whale, ghosts. This horror is the core of many otherwise inexplicable fears, such as fear of the unknown and dangerous depths of the sea, fear of ghosts, of something mysterious, of any destructive somatic process - poisoning, worms, cancer. It enters into the horror that many patients experience in front of everything that is unconscious and therefore mysterious. It can be the center of panic for no apparent reason. It would be impossible to live in such horror if it were constant and clear. A person must find and does find ways to soften it. Some of them have already been mentioned. We will discuss others further in the following chapters.
Having reviewed self-hatred and its destructive power, we cannot help but see in it the greatest tragedy of human consciousness. In his striving for the Infinite and Absolute, man begins to destroy himself. Making a deal with Satan, who promises him glory, he is forced to go to hell - to hell within himself.
Chapter 6 ALIENATION FROM YOURSELF
At the beginning of this book there was a strong emphasis on the importance of the authentic self. The real self, we said, is the living, unique, immediate center of our personality; that part of her that can and wants to grow. We have seen how unfavorable conditions from the very beginning prevent its unfettered growth. Since then, our interest has been focused on those forces of the personality that appropriate its energy and lead to the formation of pride; the latter gains independence and has a tyrannical and destructive influence on the individual.
This shift of interest in presentation from the real self to the ideal self and its development exactly reproduces the shift of interest of the neurotic. But, unlike the neurotic, we retain a clear understanding of the importance of the authentic self. Therefore, we will again place it in the center of our attention and consider more systematically than before the reasons why it is abandoned and loses its meaning for the individual.
Speaking in the language of a deal with Satan, giving up self, giving up oneself is the same as selling one’s soul. In the language of psychiatrists, this is called “alienation from oneself” or self-alienation. This term is mainly applied to those extreme states in which a person loses his sense of himself, for example with amnesia, depersonalization, etc. These states have always aroused everyone's curiosity. It is strange and even amazing that a person who is not in a state of sleep and does not have organic brain damage does not know who he is, where he is, what he is doing or what he has done.
However, these cases will seem less surprising if we consider them not as an isolated phenomenon, but turn to their relationship with less obvious forms of alienation from the self. In these forms there is no gross loss of the sense of self-identity and orientation, but there is a general deterioration in the capacity for conscious experience. For example, many neurotics live as if in a fog. Nothing is clear to them. Not only their own thoughts and feelings, but also other people and the meaning of various situations are shrouded in haze. This also includes even milder forms, in which only intrapsychic processes are clouded. I mean those people who can be sufficiently astute observers of others, who can clearly discern the scope of a situation or the direction of another's thought; but any perception (whether it concerns relationships with people, or the perception of nature, etc.) does not find access to their feelings, and internal experience does not find a path to awareness. This state of consciousness, in turn, is not too far removed from that of apparently healthy people who suffer from occasional partial “memory lapses” or “blind spots” regarding certain areas of external or internal experience.
All these forms of alienation from oneself can also concern the material side of “oneself” - one’s body and property.* A neurotic may have a very weak sense of his own body and few feelings towards it. Even bodily sensations can be inhibited. He is asked, for example, whether his feet are cold, and only then the feeling of cold reaches his consciousness through long reflection. He may not recognize himself if he suddenly sees himself in a full-length mirror. Likewise, he may not feel his home is his home—to him it is as impersonal as a hotel room. Others don't feel like their money is their money, even if it's earned. hard work.
* Here, as in many other discussions, I roughly outline the train of thought of William James. See his “Principles of Psychology” (William James, “The Principles of Psychology”), chapter “Self-Awareness”, from which all quotes in this paragraph are taken.
There are very few options for what one can without hesitation call alienation from the present self. With such alienation, everything that a person really is or possesses can be erased or obscured, including even the connections that exist for him between his authentic self and his past and the sense of continuity of his life. To some extent, this process is inherent in any neurosis. Sometimes patients become aware of their impairment in this regard, as in the case of one patient who described himself as a lamppost with a brain on top. More often they are not aware of this, although the violations can be very extensive; this is gradually revealed during analysis.
At the core of alienation from the present self is a less tangible, but more important phenomenon. This is the gradual distancing of the neurotic from his own feelings, desires, beliefs and powers. This is the loss of the feeling that he himself actively determines his life. This is the loss of the feeling of being a single organic whole. In turn, this indicates an alienation from the most living thing in us, and what I have proposed to call the authentic self. Speaking about it in the language of William James, in order to more fully imagine its purpose, it gives rise to “quivering inner life,” the spontaneity of feelings, be it joy, passionate desire, love, anger, fear, despair. It is a source of immediate interest and a surge of energy, “the source of effort and attention from which the orders of the will emanate,” the ability to desire and hope; This is the part of us that wants to grow, develop, and come true. It produces “spontaneous reactions” to our feelings or thoughts, “welcoming them or opposing them, approving or rejecting them, moving towards them or away from them, saying yes or no to them.” All this indicates that our authentic self, when strong and active, allows us to make decisions and take responsibility for them. Consequently, it leads us to true integration and a clear sense of our integrity and unity. Body and mind, deeds and thoughts or feelings are not only consonant and harmonious, but function without serious internal conflicts. In contrast to artificial means of assembling oneself together, which gain importance as the true self weakens, true integration is associated with some kind of tension, then with minimal tension.
The history of philosophy shows that we can take many advantageous positions in relation to our own problems. However, it appears as if everyone who has dealt with this topic has found it difficult to go beyond describing their experiences and what interested them. From the point of view of clinical applicability, I propose to distinguish the present or empirical self from the ideal, on the one hand, and from the authentic, on the other. The present self is a term that includes everything that a person is at the moment: his body and soul, health and neuroticism. This is what we mean when we say that we want to “know ourselves”; that is, we want to know ourselves as we are. The ideal self is the person who lives in our irrational imagination, or the one we should be, according to the dictates of our neurotic pride. The true self, which has already been defined several times here, is the “primordial” force of personal growth and self-fulfillment with which we can again fully identify when we are freed from the crippling shackles of neurosis. Therefore, this is what we refer to when we say we want to “find ourselves.” In this sense it is also (for all neurotics) a possible self - as opposed to an ideal self, which cannot be achieved. Seen from this angle, it seems the most speculative of all. Who, looking at a neurotic patient, will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and say: this is his possible self? But while the real or possible self of the neurotic personality is in some way an abstraction, it is nevertheless palpable, and we can say that every glimpse of it is felt as something more real, more definite, more certain than anything else. We can observe this quality in ourselves or in our patients when, after a few sharp inner insights, liberation from the clutches of certain compulsive needs is achieved.
* The term “empirical self” is used by W. James.
Although it is difficult to always make a clear distinction between alienation from the present self and from the authentic self, the latter will be the focus of our attention in the following discussion. Losing oneself, says Kierkegaard, is a “sickness unto death,” * this is despair - despair from a person’s lack of consciousness of himself or despair from his unwillingness to be himself. But this despair, the author continues, does not protest, does not scream about itself. Man continues to live as if he were still in direct contact with his vital core. Any other loss - a job, say, or a leg - attracts much more of his attention. This statement of Kierkegaard coincides with clinical observations. Apart from the above-mentioned pathology, the loss of oneself does not strike the eye directly and sharply. Patients come for consultation with complaints of headaches, sexual dysfunction, difficulties at work, or other symptoms; as a rule, they do not complain of loss of contact with the center of their psychic existence.
* S. Kierkegaard “Illness leading to death.”
Let us now, without going into detail, sketch out a general picture of what forces are responsible for alienation from oneself. In part, this is a consequence of neurotic development in general, especially everything that is in compulsive neurosis. Everything that includes: “I’m not walking, I’m being carried.” In this context, it does not matter in what area the compulsivity occurs - in relationships with people (humility, vindictiveness, withdrawal) or in relation to oneself (self-idealization). The very compulsion of attraction inevitably deprives a person of independence and spontaneity. As soon as, for example, the need to please everyone becomes forced, the sincerity of a person’s feelings declines; the same thing happens with his legibility. As soon as he is attracted to work for the sake of fame, his immediate interest in the work itself decreases. Compulsive drives in conflict with each other further reduce his integrity, his ability to decide and give instructions. And more importantly, the pseudo-solutions of the neurotic, although they represent attempts to integrate, to gain internal integrity, also deprive him of his independence, since they make his lifestyle compulsive.
*See “Our Inner Conflicts” and subsequent chapters of the book.
Secondly, alienation will promote another, also compulsive process, which can be described as an active withdrawal from the authentic self. The whole desire for fame is such a withdrawal, especially due to the neurotic's determination to remake himself into something he is not. He feels what should be felt, desires what should be desired, loves what should be loved. In other words, the tyranny of the Should violently drives him to be someone other than who he is or could be. In his imagination, he is the other - so different that his true self actually fades and is erased even more. Neurotic demands in terms of the self mean the throwing away of immediate forces. Instead of making his own efforts, for example in interpersonal relationships, the neurotic insists that others adapt to him. Instead of doing his best at work himself, he feels entitled to demand that someone else do the work for him. Instead of making decisions himself, he insists that others take responsibility for him. Consequently, his constructive forces are wasted, and he actually determines less and less anything in his life.
Neurotic pride removes him one step further from himself. Because he is now ashamed of who he really is (his feelings, abilities, activities), he actively turns his interest away from himself. The whole process of externalization is another active step away from oneself, present and authentic. It is surprising, by the way, how closely this process coincides with Kierkegaard’s “desperation from not wanting to be oneself.”
Finally, there are also active steps against the true self, expressed in self-hatred. Having sent our true selves, so to speak, into exile, we become despicable convicts, threatened with complete destruction. The very idea of being yourself becomes sickening and terrible. Horror sometimes appears without a mask, as one patient felt it when she thought: “It’s me.” This happened when the neat wall she had built between “herself” and “her neurosis” began to crumble. As a defense against this horror, the neurotic “makes himself disappear.” He has an unconscious interest in not perceiving himself clearly, in order to make himself, so to speak, deaf, dumb and blind. He not only hides the truth about himself, he is very interested in doing so - and this is a process that dulls his sensitivity to where the truth is and where the lies are, not only within himself, but also outside him. He is interested in maintaining this ambiguity, although on a conscious level he may suffer from it. For example, one patient, in his associations, often used monsters from the legend of Beowulf, crawling out of the lake at night, as a symbol of his self-hatred. As he once said, "They won't see me in the fog."
The result of all these steps is alienation from oneself. When using this term, we must understand that it reflects only one facet of the phenomenon. It is precisely reflected by the neurotic’s subjective feeling that he is far from himself. He may realize during analysis that all those smart things he said about himself were not really about him and his life, but about some guy with whom he has little, if anything, in common There is; and everything that he found out about him was very interesting, of course, but in no way applicable to his own life.
In fact, this analytical experience takes us straight to the heart of the problem. We must not forget that the patient is not talking about the weather or television: he is talking about his most intimate life experience. But this experience has lost its personal meaning. And, just as he can talk about himself without being “in it,” he can work, hang out with friends, go out or sleep with a woman without being in it. His attitude towards himself becomes impersonal; and the same becomes the attitude towards life in general. If the word "depersonalization" were not a technical psychiatric term, it would fit well with what is essentially alienation from the self: it is a process of depersonalization and, therefore, mortification.
I have already said that alienation from oneself (speaking only of neurosis) does not manifest itself directly and openly, as the meaning of these words might suggest, except in a state of depersonalization, a feeling of unreality of what is happening or amnesia. Despite the fact that these states are temporary, they can only occur in a person who is somewhat alien to himself. Factors that predispose one to a feeling of unreality are usually a severe blow to pride and a simultaneous sharp outburst of self-contempt that goes beyond the limits of what the person can bear. Conversely, when, with or without the help of therapy, these acute conditions pass, the alienation from oneself does not change significantly. It only again enters such limits that a person can function without obvious disorientation. On the other hand, an experienced observer will be able to perceive certain general symptoms indicating existing self-alienation, such as emptiness, deadness in the eyes, an aura of impersonality, automaticity of behavior. Camus, Marcham and Sartre brilliantly described these symptoms. The analyst never ceases to be amazed at how relatively well a person can function without the core of his self participating in this.
What then is the impact of alienation from oneself on a person’s personality and life? To provide a clear and complete picture, we will discuss the impact it has on a person's emotional life, energy, integrity, and ability to give direction to one's life and take responsibility.
It would seem difficult to say anything general about the ability to feel or about the awareness of feelings that is true for all forms of neurosis. Some exhibit heightened feelings of joy, enthusiasm, or distress; others seem cold, at least hiding behind a mask of dispassion; for others, it seems that their feelings have lost strength, become flat, erased. However, despite the endless variations, one characteristic seems to be inherent in every neurosis of any severity. Awareness, strength and type of feelings are determined mainly by pride. Sincere own feelings muffled or knocked down, sometimes to the point of complete disappearance. In short, the neurotic's feelings are controlled by pride.
The neurotic is inclined to stifle those feelings that play against his special pride, and to inflate those that play into its hands. If in his arrogance he considers himself much superior to others, he cannot allow himself to feel envy. His pride in his asceticism can put a curb on his feelings of joy. If he prides himself on being vindictive, he will readily feel vengeful rage. However, if his vindictiveness is exalted and rationalized in terms of “justice,” he will not feel vindictive rage as such, even though he expresses it so freely that no one around him would have any doubts. Pride in absolute resilience can freeze any sense of suffering. But if suffering plays important role within the framework of pride (as a means of expressing condemnation and the basis of neurotic demands), it is not only exaggerated in front of others, but is actually felt more deeply. The feeling of compassion can be discarded if it is treated as a weakness, but can be experienced in full force if it is considered a divine attribute. If pride is focused on humility, on the feeling “I don’t need anything from anyone,” then any feeling or need becomes “an unbearable torment from bending over backwards to crawl into some hole... If I like someone, he might take over me... If I like something, I will become dependent on it.”
Sometimes in analysis we can directly observe how pride interferes with sincere feelings. Although X usually rejects Y mainly because he offends his pride, X's immediate response to Y's friendly approach may also be friendly. But a minute later something prompts X: “You are a fool if you allow yourself to be deceived by friendliness.” So friendly feelings are thrown overboard. Or some picture arouses hot, ardent enthusiasm in him. But his pride also distorts this feeling when he thinks to himself: “No one else can appreciate painting as much as you.”
So, pride plays the role of censorship, encouraging awareness of feelings or preventing it. But she can manage feelings on a deeper basis. The more pride seized power, the more more people capable of an emotional response to life only from a position of pride. It is as if he has slammed his true self in a soundproof room, and only the voice of pride can be heard. Now his feeling of pleasure or displeasure, dejection or elation, sympathy or antipathy towards people is mainly a response to his pride. In the same way, the suffering that he consciously experiences is the suffering of his pride. At first glance this is not obvious. It is quite convincing for him that he really suffers from failure, from feelings of guilt, loneliness, unrequited love. He really is suffering. But the question is who is suffering in it. Upon analysis, it turns out that this is his proud self. It suffers because it believes that it has failed to reach the very pinnacle of success, to bring something to unsurpassed perfection, to be irresistibly attractive, always passionately desired by everyone. Or it suffers because it believes that it is entitled to success, popularity, etc., which are not in sight.
Only when pride subsides does he begin to feel true suffering. Only then can he feel compassion for himself, which can motivate him to do something useful for himself. The self-pity that he felt before was, rather, the drunken tears of a proud self who felt offended. Anyone who has not experienced this difference himself may shrug his shoulders, thinking that it does not matter - suffering remains suffering. But only true suffering can expand and deepen our feelings and open our hearts to the suffering of others. The story “Out of the Abyss” by Oscar Wilde describes the liberation that the author experienced when, instead of suffering from injured vanity, he began to experience true suffering.
Sometimes even a neurotic can experience the answers to his pride only through others. He may not feel humiliated by his friend's arrogance or neglect, but feel ashamed at the thought that his brother or colleagues will consider this humiliation.
The last and most famous book of the 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 adaptation option that competes with the spiritual development of personality.
The book is accessible 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 unsuccessful due to the waste of creative energy to which it condemns a person. Not only is it qualitatively different from healthy maturation and growth, but it is also directly opposed to it in many ways, and to a much greater extent than we think. Under favorable conditions, people's energy goes towards realizing their own potential, that is, towards realizing in reality the entire set of possibilities that are potentially inherent to them. This development is far from uniform. In accordance with his special temperament, abilities, passions, conditions of childhood and later life, a person can become softer or tougher, more cautious or more trusting, confident or not too self-confident, contemplative or sociable, he can show his special talents. But no matter which direction he goes, he will develop his own, inherent inclinations.
However, under the influence of internal compulsion, a person can begin to alienate himself from what is actually characteristic of him. And then the main part of his strength and energy is shifted to fulfilling another task: transforming himself into absolute perfection through a rigid system of internal instructions. Nothing less than godlike perfection satisfies his ideal self-image and satisfies his pride in the sublime virtues he believes he has, could have, or should have.
This style of neurotic development, presented in detail below, evokes in us something more than a purely clinical and theoretical interest in pathological phenomena. Here we are faced with a fundamental problem of morality, namely: with the problem of the morality of human passion, the desire for perfection, with the problem of the morality of religious duty, which commands us to achieve perfection. No serious student of human development would doubt the undesirability of pride or conceit, or the undesirability of the desire for perfection motivated by pride. But there is a wide range of opinions about the desirability or necessity of a system of disciplining internal control in order to ensure the morality of human behavior. Even accepting that these internal rules can suppress our spontaneity, shouldn’t we, in accordance with the covenant of Christianity (“Be perfect ...”), strive for perfection? Wouldn't an attempt to do without such rules be risky, in fact destructive for moral and social life?
This is not the place to discuss all the many ways in which this question has been asked and answered throughout human history, 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 (no matter what words it is called) that man is by nature sinful or driven by primitive instincts (Freud). The goal of morality then becomes the domestication or overcoming of the status naturae (natural state) of man, and not his development.
The purpose of morality becomes different for those who believe that man is by nature both “good” and at the same time “bad” (sinful or destructive). The core of morality then becomes the insurance of 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 defeating evil or suppressing evil, since there is also a positive program. However, it relies either on some supernatural assistance, or on a strong ideal of reason or will, which itself implies the application of prohibitive and restraining internal regulations.
And, finally, the problem of morality appears completely different when we believe that the constructive forces of development and evolution are innate in a person, and it is they that encourage a person to realize the possibilities inherent in him. This does not mean that a person is basically good and good, since the contrary would be implied in advance given to a person 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 realize 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 gives in, as Shelley put it, to “worshiping the dark idol of the Self.” 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 placing responsibility for this on himself.
Thus, when the criterion for choosing what to cultivate in ourselves or to eradicate is the question: does this attitude or attraction of mine hinder or promote my human growth, we come to the idea of the morality of evolution. As the frequency of neuroses shows, any kind of compulsion can easily direct constructive energy into unconstructive or even destructive channels. But if we have faith in the autonomous striving for self-fulfillment, we do not need either an internal straitjacket for our spontaneity, or a whip of internal regulations that drives us towards perfection. Undoubtedly, such disciplinary methods can be very helpful 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 overcoming destructive internal forces, and it consists in outgrowing 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 personal growth.
In this sense, working on oneself becomes not only the first moral obligation, but at the same time (in a very real sense) the first moral privilege. The transformation we seek depends on our desire to work on ourselves and occurs to the extent that we take our growth seriously. By losing our neurotic self-obsession, we are free to grow and free to love and care for others. We want to provide them with opportunities for unfettered growth while they are young, and to help them in any way possible to find and fulfill themselves when they are blocked in their development. The ideal, whether applied to oneself or to another, is liberation and the cultivation of forces leading to self-realization.
I hope that this book will also contribute to such liberation by making clear the factors that hinder it.
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Neurosis and personality growth. Karen Horney
Publisher: Academic Project, 2008
Hardcover, 400 pp.
ISBN 978-5-8291-1033-8
Circulation: 3000 copies.
The latest and most famous book by the outstanding psychoanalyst K. Horney 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 adaptation option that competes with the spiritual development of the individual.
Horney warns us against “one-sided attention to either intrapsychic or interpersonal factors,” arguing that the dynamics of neurosis can be understood “only as a process in which interpersonal conflicts lead to particular intrapsychic configurations which, being dependent on previous patterns human relations, in turn, change them.”
In the book, Horney describes childhood experiences that are typical of each of the main strategies chosen later. However, the experience of most children is not “typical”, but is a certain combination of experiences, and therefore adults do not have “typical” defenses, but a combination of them. Conflicts between defenses give rise to hesitation, inconsistency, and self-hatred. The significance of Horney's theory is that it allows us to understand a person's contradictory attitudes, behavior and beliefs as part of the structure of his internal conflicts. When considering the classification of defenses carried out by Horney, it is important to remember that it speaks about a situation at some point, about a time slice of dynamics: solutions are combined, come into conflict, weaken or strengthen, they themselves need protection, starting a “vicious circle”, and are replaced upon their failure.
Horney calls neurosis a “personal religion.” She did not talk much about traditional religions, but her theory can be used to analyze them, since most of them involve the pursuit of fame and its attendant shoulds, demands, pride and self-hatred. They offer a deal with fate that promises rewards for certain beliefs, actions, gestures, rituals and character traits.
Horney's mature theory, and especially “Neurosis and Personality Growth,” is a notable contribution not only to personality theory and psychoanalytic practice, but also to cultural studies, literary studies, and the genre of biography.
Preface to the Russian edition. 5
Introduction. 27
Chapter 1. In pursuit of glory. thirty
Chapter 2. Neurotic demands. 49
Chapter 3. Tyranny “It is necessary”. 69
Chapter 4. Neurotic pride. 86
Chapter 5. Self-hatred and contempt. 105
Chapter 6. Alienation from oneself. 140
Chapter 7. Means of reducing voltage. 156
Chapter 8. The decision to seize everything around: the call of power. 165
Chapter 9. The decision to reconcile: the call of love. 187
Chapter 10. Painful addiction. 207
Chapter 11. The decision to “retire”: the call of freedom. 223
Chapter 12. Neurotic distortions of attitude towards people. 248
Chapter 13. Neurotic disorders at work. 262
Chapter 14. The road of psychoanalytic therapy. 280
Chapter 15. Theoretical reflections. 305
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Read online “Neurosis and personal growth. The struggle for self-realization" by Horney Karen - RuLit - Page 1
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 BSK, 1997
Terminological correction by V. Danchenko
Preface to the Russian edition (B. Paris)
Karen Horney (1885-1952) is one of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers of the twentieth century. Having received medical training at the universities of Freiburg, Göttingen and Berlin, she began her personal analysis with Karl Abraham in 1910, and in 1920 she 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 republication in 1967 as The Psychology of Women, Horney has been considered a seminal figure in feminist psychoanalysis.
In 1932, Horney accepted Franz Alexander's invitation to become the second director of the newly created Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, but in 1934 she moved to New York to work at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Under the influence of new social and intellectual trends in the United States, she published two books - “The Neurotic Personality of Our Time” (1937) and “New Paths in Psychoanalysis” (1939), in which some of the fundamental tenets of Freudian theory are rejected, and its biological orientation is replaced by cultural and interpersonal. These books so shocked Horney's orthodox colleagues that they forced her to resign from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. In this phase of her scientific research, Horney joined the neo-Freudians of the cultural branch 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, in a more spiritually close atmosphere, continued to develop her theory. In Self-Analysis (1942), Our Inner Conflicts (1945), and Neurosis and Personal Growth (1950), she postulated that the individual copes with the anxiety that comes from lack of security, love, and recognition by refusing from his true feelings and invents artificial defense strategies for himself, both intrapsychic and interpersonal.
Horney's ideas went through several stages in their development, and therefore her name means different things to different people. Some see her as a woman whose scientific works brilliantly anticipated all the objections to Freud's views on the psychology of women. To others she is a neo-Freudian belonging to the culturalist school. And some identify her with her mature theory, which is a thoughtful classification of defense strategies. Every stage of Horney's work is important, but I think it is her mature theory that represents the most significant contribution to the current of psychoanalytic thought. Most of her early ideas were revised or expanded - by Horney herself or others - or merged into the work of the next generation, and sometimes were rediscovered by them. But with her mature theory the situation is different. “Our Internal Conflicts” and “Neurosis and Personal Growth” explain human behavior within the framework of the currently existing constellation of his internal conflicts and defenses. We will not find anything like this deep, extremely promising interpretation in other authors. It gives great opportunities not only to the clinician, but also to the literary and cultural critic; it can be used in political psychology, philosophy, religion, biography and solving problems of gender-role identification.
Although each of Horney's works is a notable contribution to science and therefore deserves attention, Neurosis and Personal Growth remains the main one. This book builds on her early work and greatly develops the ideas contained therein. Horney is renowned for her clarity of writing 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.
While still teaching orthodox theory at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, Horney began to diverge from Freud on issues of penis envy, female masochism, and female development, and attempted to replace the dominant phallocentric view of female psychology with a different, feminine view. Initially, she tried to change psychoanalysis from the inside, but in the end 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 Escape from Femininity” (1926), Horney sought to show that the girl and woman have only her own biological constitution and developmental patterns, which should be considered based on the female beginnings, and not as different from men's, and not as products of their supposed inferiority in comparison with men's. She challenged the psychoanalytic approach to women as inferior to men, considering this approach a consequence of the gender of its creator, a masculine genius, and the fruit of a culture in which the masculine principle took over. The existing male views on women were adopted 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 particular perspective. She argues that men's envy of pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, women's breasts and the opportunity to feed them gives rise to an unconscious tendency to devalue all this, and that the male creative impulse serves as an overcompensation for his minor role in the process of reproduction. “Womb envy” in a man is undoubtedly stronger than “penis envy” in a woman, since a man wants to belittle the importance of a woman much more than a woman wants to belittle the importance of a man.
In subsequent articles, Horney continued to analyze the male view of women in order to show the lack of scientific knowledge. In her article “Distrust Between the Sexes” (1931), she argues that women are seen as “second-class creatures” because “at all times, the more powerful side has created the ideology necessary to ensure its dominant position,” and “in this ideology, the differences of the weak have been interpreted as second-rate." In Fear of Woman (1932), Horney traces this male fear to a boy's fear that his genitals are inadequate to his mother's. A woman threatens a man not with castration, but with humiliation, she threatens “masculine self-respect.” Growing up, a man continues to worry deep down about the size of his penis and 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 puts forward an ideal of productivity, seeks sexual “victories” or seeks to humiliate the object of his love.
Horney does not deny that women are often jealous of men and dissatisfied with their feminine 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, the desire to be a man and refusal from the role of a woman." She initially believed that a woman's masculinity complex was inevitable because it was necessary to avoid the feelings of guilt and anxiety that are a product of the Oedipus situation, but she subsequently revised her opinion. The masculinity complex is a product of male dominance in culture and the inherent dynamics of a girl's family, Horney argued.
“In real life, a girl from birth is doomed to be convinced of her inferiority, whether this is expressed rudely or subtly. This situation constantly stimulates her masculinity complex” (“Leaving Femininity”).
Speaking about family dynamics, Horney at first considered the most important relationship between the girl and the men of the family, but later the mother became the central figure in the case histories of women who suffered from a masculinity complex. In Mother's Conflicts (1933), she lists all those features of a girl's childhood that she considers responsible for her masculinity complex.
Neurosis and personal growth. The struggle for self-realization
The last and most famous book of the 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 adaptation option that competes with the spiritual development of the individual. This book completes a series of works on the theory of neurosis and provides the first systematic presentation in world practice of the theory of neurosis - the causes of neurotic conflicts, their development and treatment.
- Preface to the Russian edition (B. Peris)
- I. Horney and female psychology
- II. Break with Freud
- III. Horney's mature theory
- IV. Applicability of Horney's theory
- Introduction: The Morality of Evolution
- Chapter 1. IN THE CHASE OF FAME
- Chapter 2. NEUROTIC DEMANDS
- Chapter 3. TYRANNY “MUST”
- Chapter 4. NEUROTIC PRIDE
- Chapter 5. HATRED AND SELF-CONTEMPT
- Chapter 6. ALIENATION FROM YOURSELF
- Chapter 7. VOLTAGE REDUCE MEANS
- Chapter 8. THE DECISION TO CONQUER EVERYTHING AROUND: THE CALL OF POWER
- Chapter 9. THE DECISION TO HUMILITY: THE CALL OF LOVE
- Chapter 10. PAINFUL DEPENDENCE
- Chapter 11. THE DECISION TO “RESIGN”: THE CALL OF FREEDOM
- Chapter 12. NEUROTIC DISTORTIONS OF ATTITUDE TOWARDS PEOPLE
- Chapter 13. NEUROTIC DISORDERS AT WORK*
- Chapter 14. THE PATH OF PSYCHOANALYTIC THERAPY
- Chapter 15. THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS
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Part two. Eurocentrism as an ideology for the transformation of Russia. Although, I repeat, this problem in Russia was on the periphery of philosophical interests, based on personal experience one can at least assume that the attitude towards the body was different. It was in no way considered as the private property of the individual (“The Earth is God’s, and people are the princes”). About.
Part I. Basic techniques for getting closer to people. So, carefully weigh what is preferable to you: a purely external, academic victory or the person’s good will. It is very rare to achieve both at the same time.
This concludes our joint journey into the world of human subjectivity. Probably everyone, walking along this road, made many interesting discoveries for themselves. And it’s not surprising, because our psyche is fraught with so many mysteries, so many unusual things. In front of the curious, attentive and persistent.
And here in front of each of us there are three roads: you go to the right, you go to the left. Going to the left are those who decided that age is a good excuse for dressing according to the principle “it could be worse”, that there is no point in ironing your skirt often - it will “sag”. Such women wear hats to see a gynecologist. Because the hair has not been cut or washed for a long time. But.
Chapter 5. Systems of groups of kindred souls. To develop a more convenient system, I have identified the stages of soul development, starting from the I level of beginners - through various stages of training - to the VI level of the Master. These highly evolved souls have a rich indigo color. I have no doubt that there are even higher levels, but for me.
The Second Holy Book Directly consisted in the fact that clients were assigned the status of parents who love their children, who should be awarded a medal for a kind heart and a pure soul.
Part III Why we sleepThe truth of this theory, at least as far as the brain is concerned, has now been definitively confirmed. A good example is the unihemispheric sleep of marine mammals and birds. Russian animal physiologist Lev Mukhametov woke up the dolphins every time when one of them fell asleep.
Love and calculation In any society, based on centuries-old moral norms, there has been an unspoken idea that the desire for profit is reprehensible. When talking about their preferences, few people dare to openly admit that money plays a primary role for them. An important one, of course, but there are others.
These types of programs are called “reality television.” Unfortunately, many girls turn to such magazines more often than they do to the Bible when seeking life guidance. That's why we were pleasantly surprised to see the glossy magazine "Revolve" - an illustrated mass-market edition of the New Testament for teenage girls, complete with explanations.
Neurosis and personality growth
Karen Horney
This book completes a series of works on the theory of neurosis and provides the first systematic presentation in world practice of the theory of neurosis - the causes of neurotic conflicts, their development and treatment. The constructive theory of neurosis developed by K. Horney still remains unsurpassed in the breadth and depth of its explanation of neurotic conflicts. It includes an exhaustive classification of neurotic personality types; basic neurotic drives and their connection with the basic conflict; contains an analysis of all the main methods of defense and methods of genuine resolution of neurotic conflicts.
This book completes a series of works on the theory of neurosis and provides the first systematic presentation in world practice of the theory of neurosis - the causes of neurotic conflicts, their development and treatment. Developed... Expand
What do we imagine when we are told the word “neurosis”? While I was reading this book and mentioning it to someone, I had the feeling that in most cases, neurosis is associated with shaking hands. Well, in general, with something quite obvious. But in fact, it turns out that people can live with neurosis all their lives, and we will perceive it simply as special character traits - for example, suspiciousness, touchiness, hot temper, detachment. However, all this is the result of neurosis and a defensive reaction. In every neurotic there lives a neurotic pride, which the neurotic either sticks out or tries to push away, but which determines his attitude towards himself and others. Every neurotic imagines an ideal self and subordinates his life to achieving this image. But since the image is ideal, and a person is just a person, and even weakened by an internal struggle, he cannot achieve this image, whether he actively strives for it, spitting on others, or lives it only in his head. And this makes him feel contempt and self-hatred.
And each of us is a little neurotic - I’m almost sure that everyone, after reading this book, will find at least a little about themselves.
Since this is not an accident, but an inevitable result, we would be right in concluding that the unrealistic nature of this whole pursuit of success is its inherent property. Since we live in a competitive culture, these remarks may seem strange or made out of ignorance of life. The idea that everyone wants to get ahead of their neighbor, to be better than him, is so deeply ingrained in all of us that we consider these tendencies to be “natural.” But the fact that the compulsive desire for success is awakened only in a competitive culture does not make such a desire any less neurotic. Even in a competitive culture, there are many people for whom other values (for example, internal growth) are more important than competitive superiority over others
You need to read this book while being absolutely honest with yourself. What do you really want from life? What do you not want to do, but do? Why? So necessary? You must? Do you sometimes feel emotions that are not an adequate reaction to what is happening - sudden fear and panic or greatly exaggerated anger, sadness, rage? How do you solve problems? Are you distracted from work? Have you wanted to do something, but then abandoned it because you couldn't achieve perfection at it anyway? Do you feel irritated when you are disturbed? Do you have any fear public speaking? Do you often swallow an insult or always give back to the offender? Do you often feel offended? Do you ever find yourself taking on too much? How do you evaluate the work you do?
These questions can be continued endlessly. And most likely, it will turn out that the answers to them give a hint that there are neurotic processes inside. But not everything is so bad - you can examine yourself, starting small, with your reactions to different events, unravel the tangle and reduce the effect of the compulsive and increase the effect of constructive forces in yourself.
A classic patient statement: “If it weren’t for reality, everything would be fine with me.”
What do we imagine when we are told the word “neurosis”? While I was reading this book and mentioning it to someone, I had the feeling that in most cases, neurosis is associated with shaking hands. Well, in general it’s quite enough... Expand
Karen Horney - Neurosis and Personal Growth. The struggle for self-realization.
The more his irrational imagination comes into its own, the more likely it is that he should simply be afraid of everything real, definite, 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 certainty of desires or choices and therefore avoid certainty of commitments or decisions. To illustrate, 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 in the 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 go to such extremes. But every neurotic, even if at a superficial glance he can pass for healthy, hates checking 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 is always inclined to deny the laws operating within himself, tends to refuse to see cause-and-effect relationships in physical world or that one factor follows from or enhances another.
There are an infinite number of ways to ignore the obvious that you don’t want to see. He forgets him; "It does not count"; "it is an accident"; “this is due to current circumstances”; “they forced me to do this”; “What could I do here”; "it `s naturally". Like a fraudulent accountant, he goes to any lengths to continue to double count; but unlike the swindler, he enters into his account only that which is in his favor, and pretends ignorance of the rest. I have never seen a patient whose open rebellion against reality (as expressed in Harvey: “For twenty years I struggled with reality and finally overcame it”) did not play on the same chord. Or, again quoting the classic patient statement: “If it weren’t for reality, I would be just fine.”
What remains is to distinguish more clearly between the pursuit of fame and healthy human aspirations. Outwardly, they are deceptively similar, so much so that it seems that only their degree differs. It is as if the neurotic is simply more ambitious, more concerned with power, prestige and success than the healthy person; as if his moral standards were simply higher or stricter than usual; as if he were only more arrogant or considered himself a more important person than people usually consider themselves to be. And really, who would risk drawing a definite line and say: “This is where health ends and neurosis begins”?
The similarity between healthy aspirations and neurotic drives exists because they have common roots in the capabilities inherent in every 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 does expand them. The same is true for the life of an individual. There are no hard limits to what he can cope with in his life, to the qualities and skills that he can develop in himself, and his creativity. Given these facts, it seems inevitable that man does not know his limits and therefore easily sets goals too low or too high for himself. This ignorance is the basis without which, apparently, the pursuit of glory could not begin.
The basic difference between healthy aspirations and the neurotic desire for fame lies in their motives. Healthy aspirations come from inherent in man inclination to develop the abilities inherent in it. Confidence in the inner need for growth has always been the basic principle of our theoretical and therapeutic approach.* And this confidence only increased with experience. The only thing that now seems to me necessary to clarify is the wording. Now I would say (repeating what was said in the first pages of the book) that every person is pushed towards self-realization by the living forces of his true self. * By “ours” I mean the approach of the Association for the Development of Psychoanalysis. In the introduction to the work “Our Internal 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-actualization, that is, the actualization of the authentic self, and the actualization 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 drives that result from it are also inevitably compulsive. Since the neurotic, while he is forced to cling 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 such things. He doesn't want to climb the mountain, he wants to immediately be at the top. Consequently, he loses the idea of what evolution or growth means even when he begins to speculate about them. And finally, since the creation of the ideal self is possible only through the truth about oneself, and its implementation in reality requires further distortion of this truth, the imagination eagerly comes to the rescue. Thus, to a greater or lesser extent, 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 the neurotic desire for 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 the distinction between a relatively healthy and a neurotic individual. The former may not be genuinely involved in self-actualization, just as the latter may not be fully attracted to the embodiment of the ideal self. The tendency towards self-fulfillment also operates in neurotics; we could not provide therapeutic assistance to the development of the patient if he did not have such a desire to begin with. But whereas the difference between the healthy and the neurotic personality in this respect is simply a difference of degree, the difference between true striving and compulsive drives, despite their superficial similarities, is qualitative and not quantitative.* * When I say “neurotic” in this book , I mean a person whose neurotic drives have taken precedence over healthy aspirations.
It seems to me that the most appropriate symbol for the neurotic process initiated by the pursuit of glory is the ideological content of the story of a deal with the devil. The devil, or other personified evil, tempts a person who is confused in the spiritual or material plane with an offer of unlimited power. But he can gain this power by selling his soul or going to hell. Such a temptation can arise in anyone, 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 it as a temptation and were able to reject it. Moreover, the conditions stipulated in the deal are quite consistent with the price that will have to be paid in case of neurotic development. Symbolically speaking, the easy path to endless glory inevitably turns out to be the path to an inner hell of self-contempt and self-torture. By choosing this path, a person actually loses his soul - his true self.
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 community who goes to work and has fun on the weekends. But without realizing it himself, or at least not understanding to what extent this reaches, 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 does not matter how strong the neurotic's aversion to comparison 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 general human limitations and significant individual difficulties. His actual existence is at odds with his godlike self-image. The reality outside of him also does not treat him like a deity. And for him, an hour has only sixty minutes, he has to stand in line like everyone else, a taxi driver or boss at work treats him like a mere mortal.
The humiliation to which (he feels) the neurotic is subjected is very aptly illustrated by a small incident from 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, “Whose face is so smeared?” She could never forget her furious and impotent anger. Thus, individuals of this type are almost constantly faced with inconsistencies that are startling and offensive. How can we be here? How to explain them, how to react to them, or how to try to brush them aside? As long as self-aggrandizement is too necessary for the neurotic and therefore sacrosanct, he cannot help but come to the conclusion that something is wrong with the world around him. The world must change. This means that instead of dealing with his illusions, he makes demands on the outside world. Other people and fate are obliged to treat him in accordance with 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 life.
A neurotic person believes that he has the right to special attention, delicacy, and respect. The requirements of honor are quite clear and even sometimes obvious to others. But they are only part, the tip of more comprehensive requirements. All his needs, arising from his inhibitions, fears, conflicts and decisions, must be satisfied or properly respected. Moreover. 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 admit (or to some extent solve) his problems. It’s not his business to deal with his own problems; it is up to others to see that he is not disturbed by his problems.
“A person simultaneously feels an imperative pull to rule over everyone and be loved by everyone, he is drawn to give in to everyone and to impose his will on everyone, to get away from people and beg them for friendship.” As a result, “he is torn apart by insoluble conflicts, which are often the dynamic center of neurosis.”
Thus, Horney's early books developed a paradigm for the structure of neuroses, according to which disturbances in human relationships generate basic anxiety, which leads to the development of defense strategies that, firstly, cancel themselves out, and secondly, come with each other in conflict. The Neurotic Personality of Our Time developed the theme of the pursuit of love and dominance, but also touched upon the theme of alienation; in the book 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-depreciation, self-reproach, neurotic suffering, and over-compliance with standards, but their content was more fully revealed 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 the patient's present. If Freud's focus was on the genesis of neurosis, Horney's focus was on its structure. She believed that psychoanalysis should focus attention not so much on the infantile roots of neurosis, but 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 for those who were mainly interested in the patient's past.
In New Paths in Psychoanalysis, Horney distinguished the evolutionist approach from the “mechanical evolutionist” approach. Evolutionist thinking assumes that “what exists today did not exist in this form initially, but assumed it in stages. In these preceding stages we may find very little resemblance to the present form, but the present form is inconceivable without the preceding ones.” Mechanically, evolutionist thinking insists that “nothing really new was created in the process of development,” and “what we see today is only old in a new package.” For Horney, the deep influence of early childhood experiences does not exclude subsequent development, while for Freud, nothing new happens to 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 mechanical-evolutionist aspect of Freud's thinking was reflected in his idea of the absence of time in the unconscious, in his understanding of repetition compulsion, fixation, regression and transference. Horney considers this aspect of Freud's thinking responsible "for the extent to which a person's tendencies 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. Fears, desires or holistic experiences repressed in childhood are not subject to any influence from further experiences that appear as a person grows older. This allows us to build the concept of fixation - either in relation to a 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 a person’s further attachments 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 tries to build (on a different set of premises) her own theory: “the point of view, different from the mechanistic one, is that in the process of organic development there are never 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 a path in which “each step entails the next.” Thus, “interpretations that link the difficulties of the present directly to the influence of childhood are scientifically only half the truth, and practically useless.”
According to Horney's model, early experiences influence us so deeply not because they create fixations that force a person to reproduce infantile stereotypes, but because they determine our attitude towards the world. Subsequent experiences also influence our attitude towards the world, and this ultimately results in 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 everyone previous interactions between his psyche and the environment.
There is another important difference between Horney and Freud. Freud believed that these decisive childhood experiences were relatively few and mainly of a sexual nature, while Horney believed that the totality of childhood experiences was responsible for neurotic development. The life of an adult goes awry because in childhood the entire culture surrounding him, his relationships with peers and especially family relationships made the child feel unprotected, unloved and unwanted, and this gave rise to basic anxiety in him. These unfavorable conditions provide the basis for the development of a special character structure, and from it all further difficulties flow.
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 a symptom within the framework 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 “concentrate on the forces that now move or hinder man; there is a reasonable chance that we will be able to understand them, even without knowing very much about his childhood.”
III. Horney's mature theory
In New Paths in Psychoanalysis, Horney talks about the distortion of the “immediate I person”, advancing under the pressure of the environment, as a central feature of neurosis. The goal of treatment is “to return a person to himself, to help him regain his spontaneity and find his center of gravity in himself.” Horney coined the term "authenticity" I"(real self) in the article “Are we in the right place?” (1935) and used it again in Self-Analysis (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 potential, and neurotic development, in which he is alienated from his true self. myself. The subtitle of Horney's latest book is The Struggle for Self-Actualization: her understanding of both health and neurosis is based on the concept of the real or genuine I.*
* So “genuine” or “real”? The word "authentic" allows us to immediately intuitively grasp 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 fundamental philosophical training) and needs additional clarification. I hope these clarifications will also help to understand the reasons for my translation choice in favor of the “authentic self.”
Developing a language to describe 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”).
