Karen Horney:

Psychoanalytic Social Theor

 CONTENTS:
• OVERVIEW
• PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIAL
THEORY
• BASIC HOSTILITY AND BASIC
ANXIETY
• NEUROTIC TRENDS
• 10 NEUROTIC NEEDS
• The Idealized Self-Image
Youngest daughter of her
father from her second
wife. At a young age she
developed a crush to his
older stepbrother and got
rejected, this led to her
first bout of depression
that plagued her
throughout her life. Karen Horney

re n Da nie lse n Horney

Ka
many on
was born in Ger
885
September 16, 1
Psychoanalytic
• People who do not
Social Theory have their needs for
love and affection
• focused on satisfied during
“unconscious anxiety,” childhood develop
which she believed basic hostility toward
stemmed from early then parents and, as a
childhood experiences consequence, suffer
of unmet needs, from basic anxiety
loneliness, and/or
isolation.
 Neurotic Trends
• She theorized three styles of coping that children adopt in relation to

Ti tle o f
anxiety: moving toward people, moving away from people, and moving
against people.
topic
 10 Neurotic Needs
1. The Neurotic Need for
Affection and Approval
This need​includes the desires
to be liked, to please other
people, and meet the
expectations of others. People
with this type of need are
extremely sensitive to
rejection and criticism and
fear the anger or hostility of
others.
2. The Neurotic Need
for a Partner Who Will
Take Over One’s Life
This involves the need to be
centered on a partner. People
with this need suffer extreme
fear of being abandoned by
their partner. Oftentimes,
these individuals place an
exaggerated importance on
love and believe that having a
partner will resolve all of
life’s troubles.
 3. The Neurotic Need to
Restrict One’s Life
Within Narrow Borders
Individuals with this need
prefer to remain
inconspicuous and
unnoticed. They are
undemanding and content
with little. They avoid
wishing for material things,
often making their own
needs secondary and
undervaluing their own
talents and abilities.
4. The Neurotic Need for
Power
Individuals with this need
seek power for its own sake.
They usually praise strength,
despise weakness, and will
exploit or dominate other
people. These people fear
personal limitations,
helplessness, and
uncontrollable situations.
5. The Neurotic Need to
Exploit Others
These individuals view others in
terms of what can be gained
through association with them.
People with this need generally
pride themselves on their ability to
exploit other people and are often
focused on manipulating others to
obtain desired objectives, including
such things as ideas, power, money,
or sex.
6. The Neurotic Need for
Recognition and
Unassailability
Individuals with a need for
prestige value themselves in terms
of public recognition and acclaim.
Material possessions, personality
characteristics, professional
accomplishments, and loved ones
are evaluated based on prestige
value. These individuals often fear
public embarrassment and loss of
social status.
7. The Neurotic Need for
Personal Admiration
Individuals with a neurotic
need for personal admiration
are narcissistic and have an
exaggerated self-perception.
They want to be admired
based on this imagined self-
view, not upon how they
really are.
8. The Neurotic Need for
Personal Achievement
According to Horney, people
push themselves to achieve
greater and greater things as a
result of basic insecurity.
These individuals fear failure
and feel a constant need to
accomplish more than other
people and to top even their
own earlier successes.
 9. The Neurotic Need for 10. The Neurotic Need for
Self-Sufficiency and Perfection
Independence and Prestige
These individuals exhibit a These individuals constantly
“loner” mentality, strive for complete
distancing themselves from infallibility. A common
others in order to avoid feature of this neurotic need is
being tied down or searching for personal flaws
dependent upon other in order to quickly change or
people. cover up these perceived
imperfections.
 The Idealized Self-Image
• Horney believed that human
beings, if given an environment of
discipline and warmth, will
develop feelings of security and
self-confidence and a tendency to
move toward self-realization.
• Feeling alienated from themselves,
people need desperately to acquire
a stable sense of identity. This
dilemma can be solved only by
creating an idealized self-image, an
extravagantly positive view of
themselves that exists only in their
personal belief system.

• As the idealized self-
image becomes solidified,
neurotics begin to believe
in the reality of that
image. Horney (1950)
recognized three aspects
of the idealized image: (1)
the neurotic search for
glory, (2) neurotic
claims, and (3) neurotic
pride.
The Neurotic Search
for Glory
As neurotics come to believe
in the reality of their idealized
self, they begin to incorporate
it into all aspects of their lives
—their goals, their self-
concept, and their relations
with others. Horney (1950)
referred to this comprehensive
drive toward actualizing the
ideal self as the neurotic search
for glory.
 • elements: the need for They try to achieve perfection
perfection, neurotic by erecting a complex set of
“shoulds” and “should nots.”
i tle o fambition, and the drive
T toward a vindictive triumph. Horney (1950) referred to this
top• icThe need for perfection refers drive as the Tyranny of the
Should.
to the drive to mold the whole
personality into the idealized
self. Neurotics are not
content to merely make a few • A second key element in the
alterations; nothing short of neurotic search for glory is
complete perfection is neurotic ambition, that is, the
acceptable. compulsive drive toward
superiority.
 • The third aspect of the neurotic
search for glory is the drive
Ti tle o f
toward a vindictive triumph, the
most destructive element of all.
topicThe need for a vindictive
triumph may be disguised as a
drive for achievement or success,
but “its chief aim is to put others
to shame or defeat them through
one’s very success; or to attain the
power to inflict suffering on them
—mostly of a humiliating kind”.
Neurotic Claims
A second aspect of the idealized
image is neurotic claims. In their
search for glory, neurotics build a
fantasy world—a world that is out
of sync with the real world.
Because these demands are very
much in accord with their idealized
self-image, they fail to see that
their claims of special privilege are
unreasonable.
 Neurotic Pride Self-Hatred
People with a neurotic search for glory
A false pride based not on a
can never be happy with themselves
realistic view of the true self but
because when they realize that their real
on a spurious image of the
self does not match the insatiable
idealized self.
demands of their idealized self, they
Neurotic pride is qualitatively
will begin to hate and despise
different from healthy pride or
themselves Horney (1950) recognized
realistic self-esteem.
six major ways in which people express
Neurotic pride, on the other hand,
self-hatred.
is based on an idealized image of
• relentless demands on the self,
self and is usually loudly
• merciless self-accusation
proclaimed in order to protect and
• self-contempt
support a glorified view of one’s
• self-frustration
self (Horney, 1950).
• self-torment
• self-destructive actions and impulses
 at ion
trepan

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