COURSE NOTES: Personality

denotes a term that you should know how to define, and to recognize and give examples. denotes an important person. You should remember this person's name and what (s)he has done. denotes an important research finding. denotes an issue that you should be able to discuss or explain.

Chapter 6: 

Horney and Relational Theory: Interpersonal Psychoanalytic Theory

Interpersonal Psychoanalysis: Horney

• For example, adult problems with a boss are understood as interpersonal problems of powerlessness (not as reenactments of Oedipal issues).

Basic Anxiety and Basic Hostility

basic anxiety: feeling lonely and helpless in a hostile world

basic hostility

• must be repressed for survival and security
• why?
  • dependency
  • fear of parents
  • fear of loss of love

Horney's Model of Neurotic Conflict (See Figure 6.1 in Cloninger's text on page 159.)

People compensate for basic hostility and anxiety in various ways, depending on their character type.

Three Interpersonal Orientations

1. Moving toward People: The Self-Effacing Solution
2. Moving against People: The Expansive Solution
3. Moving away from People: The Resignation Solution

• Healthy Versus Neurotic Use of Interpersonal Orientations

Measurement of Interpersonal Orientation: The Cohen CAD Scale

• "To have something good to say about everyone seems ..."
  • [moving toward: Compliance scale]
• "For me to have enough money or power to impress self-styled 'big shots' would be ..."
  • [moving against: Aggression scale]
• "Being free of social obligations is ..."
  • [moving away: Detachment scale]

MOVING TOWARD PEOPLE

• "the self-effacing solution"
• needs affection and approval
• needs a partner (friend; spouse; lover)
• undemanding and compliant
• lives life within narrow borders
• manipulative demands
• "poor me"; playing the martyr; the saint
• represses competition or dominance
• represses rage, anger, hostility
• temper tantrums

"If you love me, you will not hurt me."

• Self-Effacing Solution: The Appeal of Love
• Morbid dependency: the need for a partner (friend, lover, or spouse)
• "Poor little me": feeling of being weak and helpless
• Self-subordination: assumption that others are superior
• Martyrdom: sacrifice and suffering for others
• Need for love: desire to find self-worth in a relationship

As part of a broader set of interpersonal orientations, "moving toward" enables us to give and receive social support.

MOVING AGAINST PEOPLE

• "the expansive solution"
• Machiavellian, likeable facade
• needs control, dominance and power
• exploits others
• self-worth derived from success and prestige
• chooses a partner to enhance prestige, wealth, or power
• identifies with the ideal self

"If I have power, I shall not be hurt."

Expansive Solution: The Appeal of Mastery

• Narcissistic: in love with idealized self-image
• Perfectionistic: high standards
• Arrogant-vindictive: pride and strength
• Need to be right: to win a fight or competition
• Need for recognition: to be admired

Notice that socially approved competition can be a "moving against" symptom.

Of course, moving against can simply be aggressive.

As part of a broader set of interpersonal orientations, "moving against" enables us to be appropriately assertive.

MOVING AWAY FROM PEOPLE

• "the solution of resignation”
• attitude of "I don't care about anything"
• emotionally flat
• self-sufficient; unassailable
• counterdependent (need to never be dependent on anyone)
• belittles own potential
• lacks goals
• overly sensitive to coercion or advice
• vacillates between despised real self and ideal self

"If I withdraw, nothing can hurt me."

Resignation: The Appeal of Freedom

• Persistent resignation and lack of striving: the aversion to effort and change
• Rebellious against constraints or influences: the desire for freedom
• Shallow living: an on-looker at self and life, detached from emotional experiences and wishes
• Self-sufficient and independent: uninvolved with people
• Need for privacy: keeps others outside the magic circle of the self

As part of a broader set of interpersonal orientations, "moving away" enables us to be self-reliant (when this is appropriate).

What is mental health?

• neurotic: overemphasizes one orientation
• healthy: uses all 3 orientations

Neurotic trends (in contrast to normal needs)

• disproportionate in intensity
• indiscriminant in application
  • everyone must love me; I must be better than everyone; etc.
• disregard for reality
• intense anxiety if not satisfied

Major Adjustments to Basic Anxiety

• eclipsing the conflict
• detachment
• the idealized self
  • alienation from the real self
  • the tyranny of the shoulds
• externalization

The Core Neurotic Conflict: alienation from the real self

RESULTS of alienation from the real self:

• ABANDONMENT OF SELF-RESPONSIBILITY FOR BEHAVIOR
  • "I am driven" (not "I am the driver")
• ACTIVE MOVES AWAY FROM THE REAL SELF
  • abandonment of creativity
  • substitution of the search for glory (the "shoulds"), that is, the ideal self
• ACTIVE MOVES AGAINST THE REAL SELF
  • fear of "being oneself"
  • self is treated as an object
  • no clear self-perception

Secondary Adjustment Techniques

• blind spots
• compartmentalizing
• rationalization
• excessive self-control
• arbitrary rightness
• elusiveness
• cynicism

Cultural Determinants of Development

• Gender Roles
• Cross-Cultural Differences

social roles and gender

• womb envy
• Horner's "fear of success"
• Society, not anatomy, is responsible for gender issues. It's not "penis envy" and "castration anxiety."

Therapy

• Horney recommended keeping a personal journal.

Parental Behavior and Personality Development

• coldly indifferent
• may be openly hostile, rejecting the child
• child feels unwanted and unloved
• caused by the parents' own neuroses
• Parental Indifference leads to Basic Hostility

REPRESSION OF BASIC HOSTILITY LEADS TO:

• feelings of unworthiness
• feelings of anxiety
• various emotions: helplessness, fear, love, guilty
• hostility turned inward (against the self)

parenting

• Horney anticipated that research based on psychoanalysis would tell us more about how to be good parents. This research would have input from many professions.

The Relational Approach Within Psychoanalytic Theory

The Sense of Self in Relationships

Narcissism

Attachment in Infancy and Adulthood

• Infant Attachment
• Adult Attachments and Relationships
• Longitudinal Studies of Attachment

• Ainsworth's "secure attachment"

Ainsworth's Description of Infant Temperament Types Compared with Horney's Model of Interpersonal Orientations (See Cloninger text, Table 6.5 on page 176.)

A Model of Adult Attachment Styles (See Cloninger text, Table 6.6 on page 178.)

Childhood lessons about social attachment are the basis of social relationships throughout life.

Adult Attachment: one typology (3 styles)

• secure
• avoidant
• anxious-ambivalent

securely attached adults:

• are higher in extraversion
• are lower in neuroticism
• trust their partners more
  • "desperate love" as insecure attachment

Attachment helps regulate emotion and stress.

Parenting

Therapy

http://grove.ufl.edu/~bjparis/essays/writing.html

http://psychematters.com/bibliographies/horney.htm

http://www.apsa-co.org/ctf/pubinfo/about/bios/horney.html

http://www.apsa-co.org/ctf/pubinfo/about/bios/bowlby.html

The International Psychoanalytical Association
http://www.ipa.org.uk/site/cms/

Self Psychology (based on Heinz Kohut's theory)
http://www.selfpsychology.com/

Psychology of the Self (based on Heinz Kohut's theory)
http://www.psychologyoftheself.com/

Back to Top