Karen Horney-History of Psycology-Lecture Handout, Exercises of History of Psychology

Lesson 35

NEO-FREUDIANS

Karen Horney

She was an American psychoanalyst and is classified as a Neo-Freudian. Horney was a pioneering theorist in

personality, psychoanalysis, and feminine psychology.

Karen Horney offered a list of ten neurotic needs which are:

1. Need for approval

2. Need for domination

9. Ambition

10. Admiration

These needs lead to neurotic trends.

Neurotic trends appear as three kinds in social dealing:

i. Movement towards

Some children who feel a great deal of anxiety and helplessness move toward people in order to seek help

and acceptance. They are striving to feel worthy and can believe the only way to gain this, through the

acceptance of others. These people have an intense need to be liked, involved, to be important, and

appreciated. So they will often fall in love quickly or feel an artificial but very strong attachment to people,

even they may not know well. Their attempts to make that person love them create a clinginess and

iii. Movement against

Another way to deal with insecurities and anxiety is to try to force your power onto others in hopes of

feeling good about yourself. Those with this personality style come across as bossy, demanding, selfish, and

even cruel. Once again, relationships appear doomed from the beginning.

The idealized image of the self is an attempt by a person to integrate his personality. Horney distinguishes

between situational neurosis and character neurosis. Her method of treatment was to discover the neurotic

needs, the movement away, movement towards, and movement against plus bring it to the attention of the

person.