Horney & Humanistic Psychoanalysis
Major Concepts (continued)
Dynamics
Horneyan theory has a dynamic quality: solutions combine, conflict, become stronger or weaker, need to be defended, generate vicious circles, and are replaced by others when they collapse. Conflicts between the defenses cause oscillations, inconsistencies, and self-hate. Within the pride system, there is a seesawing between the idealized and despised selves and a crossfire of conflicting shoulds.
The Basic Conflict
In each of the interpersonal defenses, one of the elements involved in basic anxiety is overemphasized: helplessness in the compliant solution, hostility in the aggressive solution, and isolation in the detached solution. Since under pathogenic conditions all of these feelings are likely to occur, individuals will come to make all three of the defensive moves, giving rise to what Horney calls the "basic conflict."
To gain some sense of wholeness, they will emphasize one move more than the others and will become predominantly self-effacing, expansive, or detached. Which move they emphasize will depend on the particular combination of temperamental and environmental factors at work in their situation. The other trends will continue to exist but will operate unconsciously and manifest themselves in disguised and devious ways. The basic conflict will not have been resolved but will simply have gone underground. When the submerged trends are for some reason brought closer to the surface, individuals will experience severe inner turmoil and may be unable to move in any direction at all. Under the impetus of some powerful influence or the dramatic failure of their predominant solution, they may embrace one of their repressed defensive strategies. They will experience this as conversion or education, but it will merely be the substitution of one neurotic solution for another.
The Relation between the Interpersonal and Intrapsychic Defenses
In Neurosis and Human Growth (1950), Horney warned against "a one-sided focus on either intrapsychic or interpersonal factors," contending that the dynamics of neurosis can be understood "only as a process in which interpersonal conflicts lead to a peculiar intrapsychic configuration, and this in turn depends on and modifies the old patterns of human relations" (p. 237). Although she sometimes overemphasized the intrapsychic herself, her theory as a whole maintained the balance she prescribed.
In reviewing the evolution of her theory at the end of Neurosis and Human Growth (1950), Horney observed that at first she saw neurosis as essentially a disturbance in human relationships. This disturbance creates basic anxiety against which we defend ourselves by employing the interpersonal strategies of defense. In her earlier books she had been aware of intrapsychic factors but had not recognized their extent and importance. She came to realize, however, that the formation of the idealized image marks a turning point in development, as our energies shift from developing our real potentialities to actualizing our grandiose conception of ourselves. The idealized image generates the pride system, which becomes a kind of Frankenstein's monster that hates and seeks to destroy its creator. Neurosis is a disturbance not only in our relationships with others but also in our relationship with ourselves.
The disturbance in the relationship with ourselves makes it nearly impossible for us to form better relationships with others, and even if we could form such relationships, they would not undo the original damage. The pride system is the logical outgrowth of early development and the beginning of a new one. Once in existence it has a dynamic of its own that is to a large degree independent of external events. Since the pride system affects how we interact with others, it poisons all our relationships and makes it extremely difficult for them to be a source of healing or growth. To deal successfully with the pride system, analysts must recognize its manifestations in the transference and understand its structure and function.
The Central Inner Conflict
In the course of successful therapy, an intrapsychic conflict develops between the pride system and the emerging real self, which now becomes a target of self-hate. Horney calls this the central inner conflict. Living from the real self involves accepting a world of uncertainty, process, and limitation. It means giving up the search for glory and settling for a less exalted existence. The proud self therefore senses the real self as a threat to its very existence and turns upon it with scorn.
Although the central inner conflict occurs at a rather late stage in psychological growth, it is extremely difficult to resolve. People who have focused their lives on dreams of glory may never be able fully to free themselves from the habit of self-idealization. If they have made progress in therapy, they may seize on their improvement as "the last chance to actualize [their] idealized self in the shining glory of perfect health" (Horney, 1950, p. 358). They may look down on others for being neurotic, drive themselves to behave in what they consider to be healthy ways, and rage at themselves when they realize that they will always have problems and imperfections. Horney's hope is that patients will "feel sympathetic" toward themselves and experience themselves "as being neither particularly wonderful nor despicable but as the struggling and often harassed" human beings they are (Horney, 1950, p. 359).
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