What institution did Horney found?
American Institution of Psychoanalysis
Beliefs of Horney
- Psychosexual stages aren’t entirely correct (penis envy and electra complexes are bogus)
- Personality is largely driven by results of interpersonal conflict (not sexual)
- Gender differences are result of socialization
What’s normal personality development?
- Children develop basic confidence in themselves and others
- Parents convey warmth, interest, respect
What’s abnormal personality development?
- Child feels small, humiliated, deserted, etc
- Parents belittle, are indifferent, abusive, etc
- Leads to basic anxiety, root of neurosis
What’s basic anxiety?
Child’s feeling of being isolated and helpless in a hostile world
- wants to be helpless/dependent/basic hostility but can’t
What’s basic hostility?
- A reaction to parental neglect or rejection
- Leads to increased anxiety because child needs parents but also wants to punish them
- Child can’t act hostile or dependent for fear of further rejection
3 Means of interpersonal control and coping (3 Interpersonal Orientations)
- Moving Toward (looking to gain approval)
- Getting type
- Moving Against (aggressive and domineering)
- Ruling Type
- Moving Away (resigning and avoiding people)
- Avoiding Type
Moving Towards Type
- Morbid dependency: the need for a partner
- Assuming others are superior
- Sacrificing for others to be liked
- Need for love
- Feeling weak and helpless
Moving Against Type
- Narcissistic
- Arrogance
- Need to be right; argumentative
- Need for recognition
Moving Away Type
- Resigned; strive for little
- Desire freedom
- Detached from emotional experiences
- Self-sufficient and independent
- Need for privacy
What did Horney believe about neurotic people
Neurotic people are unable to shift posture
- aka switch between types
How do neurotic needs differ from healthy values?
- Disproportionate in intensity
- Indiscriminate in application to all persons
- Evidence extreme disregard for reality
- Provoke intense anxiety when unsatisfied
What’s “Jealousy”
Fear of losing a relationship that is viewed as the best available means of satisfying as insatiable need for affection and incessant demand for unconditional love
What’s “Tyranny of Shoulds”
Belief that one “should” do things
- part of the process of turning away from one’s real self to their ideal self
What “Fear of Success”
Belief that women are likely to undermine their abilities because men are competitive and lead women to believe they are bad if they are successful
Major Adjustments to Basic Anxiety (4 of them)
- Eclipsing the conflict: raising the opposite to predominance (ie. hostile –> dependent)
- Detachment: moving away type
- The Idealized Self: move away from “real self” and towards “ideal”
- Externalization: projects inner conflicts onto outside world (experience somatic complaints)
Secondary Adjustments to Basic Anxiety - Ideal Self (2 of them)
- Blind spots: being unaware of overt behavior that is incompatible with idealized self image
- Compartmentalization: incompatible behaviors are recognized, but solely within different arenas
Secondary Adjustments to Basic Anxiety - Minimizing Conflict (2 of them)
- Arbitrary Rightness: declaring arbitrarily dogmatically that I am right
- Elusiveness: don’t commit to any opinion to reduce chance of experiencing conflict
Horney view on gender roles
- Gender roles are culturally (not biologically) formed
- They assign power or dominance of males and submissiveness/nurturance for females
- Penis envy is cultural
- Thought that women who were professionals suffered personality disturbances
Bem Sex Role Inventory
Measure of masculine and feminine personality
