Karen Horney and her theory of neurotic personality

Psychiatrist Karen Horney was one of the main representatives of neo-Freudianism, a movement that defied the conventions of the traditional psychoanalysis and allowed this theoretical orientation to expand, especially in the field of neurosis.

Horney was also the first female psychiatrist to publish essays on female mental health and to question the biological approaches regarding the gender differences of her predecessors, so it is considered the founder of feminist psychology.

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Karen Horney Biography

Karen Danielsen was born in Germany in 1885. She studied medicine at the universities of Freiburg, Göttingen, and Berlin, which had only recently accepted women, and she graduated in 1913. During her studies she met Oskar Horney, whose surname she adopted after marrying him in 1909 and with whom she had three daughters before they divorced.

A few years after Horney discharged from her her parents died and she entered a state of prolonged depression. It was then that

she started training as a psychoanalyst her at the same time that she underwent therapy with Karl Abraham, a pioneer of psychoanalysis of whom Freud said that she was her best student.

Abraham attributed Horney's symptoms to repressing incestuous desires toward her father; Horney rejected her hypothesis and dropped out of therapy. She later became one of the main critics of the mainstream of psychoanalysis and its emphasis on male sexuality.

In 1915 she was appointed secretary of the German Psychoanalytic Association, founded by Abraham himself, which laid the foundations for the teaching of psychoanalysis that would take place during the following decades.

Horney moved to the United States with her daughters in 1932 because of the rise of Nazism and the rejection that she suffered from Freud and his followers. She there she started a relationship and she worked with other prominent psychoanalysts such as Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan. She devoted herself to therapy, training, and developing her theory until 1952, the year of her death.

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Neo-Freudianism and feminist psychology

It is considered that Horney and Alfred Adler are the founders of neo-Freudianism, a current of psychoanalysis that arose as a reaction to some of Freud's postulates and facilitated alternative developments to occur.

Specifically, Horney rejected the emphasis of early psychoanalysis on sexuality and aggressiveness as determining factors in the development of personality and neuroses. This author found Freud and other male psychiatrists' obsession with the penis particularly absurd.

Horney considered that “penis envy” was explained by social inequality between genders; what women envied in men was not their sexual organ, but their social role, and the same could happen in the opposite sense. She also considered that these roles were largely determined by culture, and not only by biological differences.

Between 1922 and 1937 Horney made various theoretical contributions on female psychology, becoming the first feminist psychiatrist. Among the topics she wrote about, the overvaluation of the male figure, the difficulties of motherhood and the contradictions inherent in monogamy stand out.

Neurosis, real self and self-realization

According to Horney, neurosis is an alteration in a person's relationship with himself and with others. The key factor in the appearance of symptoms is the way parents handle anxiety of the child during her development.

The neurotic personality or character neurosis arises when parents do not provide their children with a loving and safe environment, generating feelings of isolation, helplessness and hostility. This blocks normal development and prevents the person from becoming their "real self".

In Horney's work, the real self (or self) is equivalent to identity. If an individual's personal growth is healthy, their behaviors and relationships develop properly, which leads to self-realization. For Horney this is a natural human tendency; later humanists like Rogers and Maslow would hold the same belief.

By cons, the identity of neurotic people is divided between the real self and the ideal self. As the goals of the ideal self are not realistic, the person identifies with a disparaged image of himself, which leads him to distance himself even more from the real self. Thus, neurotics alternate between perfectionism and self-loathing.

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Neurotic personality types

Horney's theory of neurosis describes three neurotic personality types, or neurotic tendencies. These are divided according to the means that the person uses to seek safety, and they are consolidated through the reinforcements obtained from her environment during childhood.

1. Complacent or submissive

The complacent-type character neurosis is characterized by seeking approval and affection from others. It appears as a consequence of continuous feelings of helplessness, neglect and abandonment in early development.

In these cases, the self is annulled as a source of security and reinforcement, and the internal conflict is replaced by the external one. Thus, submissive neurotic people often believe that their problems could be solved by a new partner, for example.

2. Aggressive or expansive

In this case hostility predominates in the relationship with parents. According to Horney, expansive neurotics express their sense of identity by dominating and exploiting others. They are usually selfish, distant and ambitious people who seek to be known, admired and, sometimes, feared by their environment or by society in general.

3. Isolated and resigned

When neither submission nor aggressiveness allows the child to capture the attention of her parents, he may develop a character neurosis of an isolated type. In these people there are needs for perfectionism, independence and loneliness exaggerated that lead to a detached and shallow life.