Horney Notes
0. Comparison of Psychoanalytic theories – key similarities, key differences.
1. She does a great job of describing neurotic paths – variations and details and
reasoning and the mess of being neurotic
Lots of good sideline quotes this chapter
An anxiety should cause an action, not a neurosis.
Define neurosis: neurosis is inauthentic suffering (Jung’s defintion), it is stuck - working
on something, but it doesn’t change
Similar to cognitive therapy - where response doesn’t match the situation. This is
the same thing, and we’re looking for patterns.
Ways of responding - patterns of
Give examples here
In textbook, they are called….
Describe ways
A. Moving toward, against, or away from people
1) Moving towards people (Compliant Type) “Appeal of Love”
2) Moving against people (Hostile Type) “Appeal of Mastery”
3) Moving away from people (Detached Type) “Appeal of Freedom”
Movie: “About a Boy”
Neurotic Bargains:
If I help you, you won’t leave. (TOWARD)
If I’m nice (don’t get angry), you won’t get angry. (TOWARD)
If I join in (to your teasing, etc), I’ll be part of the crowd. (TOWARD)
If I’m right, nothing cango wrong. (AGAINST)
If I can do everything for myself, no one can hurt me. (AWAY)
To show neurotic ways:
Used Sooty Sarah, lead to Karpman Drama Triangle
http://www.psychologicalselfhelp.org/Chapter6/chap6_45.html
Moving toward: Real Self & Ways of Responding
Horney notes, page 1
7/27/16
Karen Horney had three different ways of responding. One: Moving toward
people (Compliant type); in this response people who feel a great deal of worry
and helplessness move toward people in order to seek help and acceptance.
These people feel a strong need to be liked and appreciated. This can be bad
because this type can become very clingy and needy and when and if in a
relationship their partner may feel too overwhelmed and exit the relationship. (I
have a problem with this). When moving toward people is brought to my mind I
tend to think of myself a lot. Often a fear of helplessness and abandonment
occurs in the category of compliance, and this relates to the basic anxiety of a
problem. Moving toward people has been very problematic for me because I
have moved towards someone and become so reliant on this one person to give
me all the love and affection I never got from anyone else in my life (this is the
bargain piece – and the neurotic- the making up for others in the past), and
now this person has started to “abandon” me and I am left in a place I thought I
was fixing or was trying to fix as the original coping method. Looking at the
situation from afar, and taking a step back I can now see that this complete need
to be loved and accepted has overwhelmed and exhausted my partner; and it
can probably never be altered because of my neurotic behavior. Two: Moving
against people
2. Real & ideal self
Read page 17 of Neurosis and human growth (1st page of chatper 1)
Real Self is…
Growth, wants to realize one’s talents, potentials, and interests
Self actualization
Acts more clearly in the moment
Feels more directly, but also more complexly - often multiple feelings
relaxed and curious
Ideal self
Ideal self is created in those times of anxiety and need – the scared mind
says “if I were this way, then I wouldn’t have been hurt or left alone.”
Healthy looks like:
b. In an ideal world, parents have come to terms with their own scarring.
(Similar to Alice Miller --when we haven't healed our own stuff, we are not
able to love kids as they are. If parents have done that, it creates a world
where the child is safe, recognizes and trusts feelings, can make mistakes
and learn for them, and be loved even when they blow it.
Horney notes, page 2
7/27/16
Neither id nor the real self has knowledge of time, The Id is like the real self because it is
raw desire, tailored specifically to the individual in which it resides
The real self is the part of our identity that is relaxed and curious. The real self gets lost
watching an aquarium in a doctor’s office, or exploring a new place. The real self is what
we’re like under our neuroses, when we’re relaxed interested, energetic, and engaged.
This is the part of ourselves that we experience when we let go and enjoy. The real self is
also resilient and not really capable of being hurt. Beautifully said. Joe Lighton
Ways to help them see Ideal Self and Real Self
What creates it:
Parents (society) can’t see child for themselves, vs.
give them room for own feelings and “healthy friction with will and instincts of
others”
Ideal self is not good
Ideal self: who I should be in order to get the love and protection I need - not exactly, that
what it looks like, but not, Horney says, how it is experienced.
If I attain the ideal self, then…
What I need for myself
Too cognitive
People will love me
I’ll never be hurt
Introject: when we swallow whole pieces other people give us because we can’t digest
them - hear mom’s voice, teacher’s voice
These big whole balls of anxiety that…
See example in file
Tyranny of the shoulds
Live up to teacher’s expectation
Despised self:
Inflation - Tyranny of shoulds – too big, then break apart
Perfectionism… and the ideal self
This ideal self, trying to compensate for weakness and guilt, sets up impossible
demands, called neurotic needs. These needs are unconscious, intense, insatiable,
anxiety-causing, and out of touch with reality. For instance, if one has a neurotic need for
affection, it becomes urgent to be loved by everyone, all one's peers, all the family,
teachers, the paper carrier, etc. Horney listed several neurotic needs, primarily needs for
perfection, power, independence, and affection. All are attempts to handle the primitive
hostility from childhood. So, how do we get depressed?
Horney notes, page 3
7/27/16
Write down your ideal self…
Read from Neurosis and Human Growth, page 65 main para in middle
Example page 66 - the feeling even after knowing…
Pull out things you could never be
e.g. a different height, or younger
How was this creature created by the outside world
The chapter has 3 Phases:
Freud and Women - quote - p. 123
Instead – emphasize Cultural role
Not penis envy - privilege envy
p. 124 - instincts are basically insatiable, destructive and anti-social,
that’s a neurotic response to bad conditions
Quotes on Psychology of Women
[W]e should stop bothering about what is feminine…. Standards of
masculinity and femininity are artificial standards….
Differences between the two sexes certainly exist, but we shall never be
able to discover what they are until we have first developed our
potentialities as human beings. Paradoxical as it may sound, we shall find
out about these differences only if we forget about them.
Horney, 1935, in Paris,
in Frager and Fadiman, 1994, p. 238
She is responding to ideas like this:
(gives us some historical context)
She is said to be at home only in the realm of eros. Spiritual matters are alien to her
innermost being, and she is at odds with cultural trends... She therefore is…a second-rate
being…. [She is] prevented from real accomplishment by the deplorable, bloody
tragedies of menstruation and childbirth. And so every man silently thanks his God, just
as the pious Jew does in his prayers, that he was not created a woman.
Horney, 1967, p. 114
Horney notes, page 4
7/27/16
Humanistic and growth psychology
Ideal and real self, pride system
Horney notes, page 5
7/27/16
What creates neurosis
Basic Hostility
3 pieces – not explained well
parents – more or less hostility for child to deal with.
Include in list: parents focused on own needs
Lacking in warmth
Aware of own weakness -> despised self concept
Basic Anxiety
- not loved, accepted
- response
- some left over
Jo’s notes
Basic Conflict and pride system - not in Jo’s notes
interesting
Horney notes, page 6
7/27/16
3 Ways of reacting
rigidity = ill health
more detail in separate file
Ways of Responding
In textbook, they are called….
Describe ways
B. Moving toward, against, or away from people
1. Moving towards people (Compliant Type)
2. Moving against people (Hostile Type)
3. Moving away from people (Detached Type)
Neurotic Bargains:
If I help you, you won’t leave. (TOWARD)
If I’m nice (don’t get angry), you won’t get angry. (TOWARD)
If I join in (to your teasing, etc), I’ll be part of the crowd. (TOWARD)
In class exercise
Come up with problem people have experienced
Any questions?
Or Amber’s example from ‘07
Is it a problem if you get tired of spending time together?
You enjoy it for a while, then you get frustrated. You spend a couple of days
together, but you think, if we did more, I’d get irritated, so you pull back.
Here’s the first question: What’s your underlying concern?
I don’t think I want to know what he really thinks
Small groups
1. What would you ask to help identify the pattern?
Answers: how often
What happens in response to stress?
Once they start the pattern, do they respond in a way that makes it worse?
Or do they flip roles entirely?
Vs. in between
(for him, for her)
2. You are with one of the people in the couple. What would you do to help them
experience their real self?
Horney notes, page 7
7/27/16
Perhaps give them statements
Does this sound like co-dependency? Oh great.
Excerpts from Rogers dialogues
Exercise
-
everyday examples from today
look to feel how you struggle with it…why do you hold on to it…
what is the way you hold on to it?
See the Ways of Responding
2nd Exercise
- take those examples, now imagine how they are connected back through ways
of reacting to basic anxiety: sense of lonely
- perhaps – reasonable reaction, slightly neurotic, really neurotic
Examples from 2nd:
- how long you going to be in the store? Not long. In for an hour. Felt very
angry. – abandonment: dad left
- boyfriend wants to talk about problems, she doesn’t. When she feels angry,
she likes to keep it in for a day, then let it go.
Basic Anxiety:
Loneliness
Abandonment issues
Not being heard
Not being remembered (how could you forget… me in car, birthdays, etc)
Not too close, not too far
Control
Plan my future
Imagine what’s going to happen
Everyday problem:
Reasonable responses
You kinda want to…
Connects to core issues
Examples from 1st
T’nesa – have to clean before working
Markie – job – boss brings in crap from home
Loews Cinema 1. Curse of retail – never done straigthening up
Horney notes, page 8
7/27/16
and it doesn’t seem to be the main work – talking to customers
http://mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap6/chap6g.htm - changed
NOTES TO SELF:
Use examples from Movies and shows they mention the 1st week
Examples from Friends, Seinfeld, or Everybody Loves Raymond
George Lopez show
Woody Allen
Office Space, movie and tv show
Asian example? 3 daughters and Dad - Eat Drink Man Woman?
African American example?
Reality shows
American Idol
Jerry Springer – esque shows
too much dramas
For UPR - use Rogers examples
Horney notes, page 9
7/27/16