Karen Horney’s three trends in dealing with anxiety
- moving toward
- moving against
- moving away
moving toward
a person attempts to deal with anxiety by an excessive interest in being accepted, needed, and approved of
moving against
a person assumes that everyone is hostile and that life is a struggle against all
moving away
the person shrinks away from others into neurotic detachment
Sullivan vs. Freud
emotional experiences are not based in biological drives, but in relations with others
interpersonal approach, which placed greater emphasis on developmental experiences that occur after the Oedipal period (preadolescence)
object relations theory
interested in how experiences with important people in the past are represented as parts or aspects of the self and then, in turn, affect one’s relationships with others in the present. Ex. childhood mistrust towards mother projected into adulthood towards others
self psychology
similar to object relations theory, but in self psychology it is thought that developmental experiences influence mental representations of oneself
(focus on narcissism)
Mary Ainsworth’s attachment types
- secure attachment
- anxious-avoidant
- anxious-ambivalent
Secure attachment via romantic and work relationships
view romantic feelings as being somewhat stable but also waxing and waning, and they discount the kind of head-over-heels romantic love often depicted in movies
approach work with confidence, are relatively unburdened by fears of failure, and do not allow work to
interfere with personal relationships
Anxious-Avoidant via romantic and work relationships
skeptical of the lasting quality of romantic love and felt that it was rare to find a person one can really fall in love with
very much influenced by praise and fear rejection at work and allow love concerns to interfere with work performance
Anxious-ambivalent via romantic and work relationships
easy to fall in love but rare to find true love
use work to avoid social interaction and, although they do well financially, are less satisfied with their jobs than secure people
strengths of the psychoanalytic theory
- Provides for the discovery and investigation of many interesting phenomena
- Develops techniques for research and therapy (free association, dream interpretation, transference analysis)
- Recognizes the complexity of human behavior
- Encompasses a broad range of phenomena
limitations to the psychoanalytic theory
- Fails to define all its concepts clearly and distinctly
- Makes empirical testing difficult, at times impossible
- Endorses the questionable view of the person as an energy system
- Tolerates resistance by parts of the profession to empirical research and change in the theory
