(28 reviews) Author: ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDFOne of the most original psychoanalysts after Freud, Karen Horney pioneered such now-familiar concepts as alienation, self-realization, and the idealized image, and she brought to psychoanalysis a new understanding of the importance of culture and environment.
Karen Horney was born in Hamburg in 1885 and studied at the University of Berlin, receiving her medical degree in 1913. From 1914 to 1918 she studied psychiatry at Berlin-Lankwitz, Germany, and from 1918 to 1932 taught at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. She participated in many international congresses, among them the historic discussion of lay analysis chaired by Sigmund Freud.
Dr. Horney came to the United States in 1932 and for two years was associate director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. In 1934 she came to New York and was a member of the teaching staff of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute until 1941, when she became one of the founders of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and the American Institute for Psychoanalysis.
In Neurosis and Human Growth, Dr. Horney discusses the neurotic process as a special form of human development: the antithesis of healthy growth. She unfolds the different stages of this situation, describing neurotic claims, the tyranny of inner dictates, and the neurotic's solutions for relieving the tensions of conflict in such emotional attitudes as domination, self-effacement, dependency, or resignation. Throughout, she outlines with penetrating insight the forces that work for and against the person's realization of his or her potentialities.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 15 hours and 43 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
- Audible.com Release Date: May 3, 2011
- Language: English
- ASIN: B004ZCHM9G
Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle toward Self-Realization PDF
Karen Horney writes that emotional problems originate in the environment. Problems usually start during childhood when the child faces an hostile environment (e.g. abusive, careless, or overprotective parents). In order to deal with this hostile environment the child develops defense mechanisms: she moves toward people, she moves against people, or she moves away from people. The child may accept all kinds of abuses in exchange for some affection; the child may become agressive and rebellious against parents and authority in general; or the child may turn into a rock (aloof, reserved, quiet). Later in life these defense mechanisms evolve into three kinds of neuroses: one characterized by morbid dependency on others and compliance, another by extreme agressive behavior despising almost everybody, and another one by aloofness and carelessness. At the same time that the person develops any of these types of behavior she creates an idealized image of herself (with all kinds of attributes, talents and virtues -which are mainly imagined and which she tries to live up to.) The real self (the actual talents and limitations) recede into the unconscious or are "forgotten". The more the neurotic attempts to live up to her idealized self, the more difficulties and inner conflicts she faces, and the more she hates her real self. This creates all kinds of difficulties in the person's relationships (to herself and to others) and in all kinds of situations including the job place. Along with these difficulties the person experiences depression and anxiety, among other symptoms.
This is therapy in a book. Unbelievable work of psychoanalysis.
A person, given the chance, will develop his own feelings, thoughts, wishes, interests and potentialities. He will draw on his own resources, skills, will-power, discipline and he will develop his special abilities and unique gifts. In short, he will grow, substantially undiverted, towards what Karen Horney calls self-realization.But through a variety of adverse influences, a child, or even an adult, may not be permitted to grow according to his individual needs and possibilities. A persistently hostile environment of people around him, especially during childhood, that are dominating, overindulgent, erratic, partial to others, hypocritical, indifferent, etc., might kill off the ability to grow and become one's real self. As a result the person, does not develop a feeling of belonging of "we", but instead develops a profound insecurity, lack of self-confidence and vague apprehensiveness, which Karen Horney refers to as basic anxieties.
The person tries to resolve the anxiety by either moving away from people (aloofness, isolation), or against people (rebelling) or moving towards people (submission and compliance). In a healthy individual, these coping trends are present and used in varying degrees depending on the situation. But in a neurotic person, these trends become very rigid and contradictory. Eventually, one of the trends will become a dominant trend, and it will become a predominant trait in the person's personality. It is destructive in that it chokes off much of the other parts of a persons personality and impedes growth.
This dominant coping trend is an artificial attempt at a solution, and it will fail. But to a person suffering from a neurosis, the trend will appear to work and even become intensified.
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