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Karen Horney
The Neopsychoanalytic Approach
Neopsychoanalytic
Reaction to Freud
Humans motivated by need for security
and love, not by sex and aggression
Influence of gender experience
More emphasis on social factors in
influencing personality
Safety Need
Social forces in childhood, not biological
forces influence personality
No universal stages of development
Childhood is dominated by need for
security and freedom from fear
Parents foster security by treating the child with
warmth and affection
Normality of personality development direct
function of level of warmth and affection
received by parents
Basic Anxiety
Pervasive feeling of loneliness and
helplessness
Foundation of neurosis
4 ways we protect ourselves in childhood
from basic anxiety:
Securing love and affection
Being submissive
Attaining power
Withdrawing
Neurotic Needs
Definition: Irrational defenses against
anxiety that become a permanent part of
personality and that affect behavior
Encompass the 4 ways of protecting
ourselves against anxiety
10 Neurotic Needs
 Affection and approval (gaining affection)
 A dominant partner (submissive)
 Power (attaining power)
 Exploitation (attaining power)
 Prestige (attaining power)
 Admiration (attaining power)
 Achievement or ambition (attaining power)
 Self-sufficiency (withdrawing)
 Perfection (withdrawing)
 Narrow limits to life (withdrawing)
Neurotic Trends
 3 categories of behaviors and attitudes toward
oneself and others that express a person’s
needs
 Neurotic persons are compelled to act based on
one of the neurotic trends
Movement toward others (compliant personality)
Movement against others (aggressive personality)
Movement away from others (detached personality)
Neurotic Trends
 Affection and approval (mvmt. toward)
 A dominant partner (mvmt. toward)
 Power (mvmt against)
 Exploitation (mvmt. against)
 Prestige (mvmt against)
 Admiration (mvmt. against)
 Achievement or ambition (mvmt against)
 Self-sufficiency (mvmt away)
 Perfection (mvmt away)
 Narrow limits to life (mvmt away)
The Compliant Personality
Move toward others
Intense need for affection and approval
Urge to be loved, wanted
Manipulate others to achieve goals
Think of self as helpless
Suppress desires to control, exploit others
The Aggressive Personality
Move against people
Survival of the fittest
See self as superior
Driven to succeed to compensate for
feelings of insecurity, anxiety
The Detached Personality
Move away from others
Strive to become self-sufficient
Desire for privacy
Maintain emotional distance
Personality types
1 usually dominates, other 2 present to
lesser degree
Conflict
Basic incompatibility of 3 trends
Core of neurosis
Experience very intense conflict
Idealized Self-Image
 Normal people: Built on flexible, realistic
assessment of one’s abilities
 Neurotic people: Inflexible, unrealistic selfappraisal
 Tyranny of the shoulds
Used by neurotics to attain the idealized self
Deny true self and behave in terms of what we think we
should be doing
 Externalization: Reduce conflict caused by
discrepancy between ideal and actual self
Feminine Psychology
Revision of psychoanalysis to include
psychological conflicts found in the
traditional ideal of womanhood and
women’s roles
Research and Assessment
Used techniques of case study, free
association and dream analysis
Personality types in childhood appear to
continue through to adulthood
Tyranny of the shoulds: Those who
engaged in tasks because they wanted to
versus because they thought they should
scored higher on general life satisfaction
Criticisms of Horney
Theory of personality not as well
constructed as Freudian theory
Ignores roles of sociology and
anthropology in influencing personality
Observations too influenced by middle
class America
Contributions of Horney
Contribution to feminist psychology
Influence on Erikson and Maslow
More optimistic view of personality than
Freud
Accounts for social factors in shaping
personality