ADJUSTMENT TO BASIC ANXIETY:Moving Towards People, Moving Against People

<< KAREN HORNEY:Adjustment to Basic Anxiety, Adjustment Techniques

ERIK ERIKSON:Anatomy and Destiny, Ego Psychology, Goal of Psychotherapy >>

Personality Psychology PSY 405

LESSON 12

ADJUSTMENT TO BASIC ANXIETY

Karen Horney has listed ten neurotic needs or ten abnormal trends in people. They are following:

1. The neurotic need for affection and approval.

2. The neurotic need for a partner who will run ones life.

3. The neurotic need to live ones life with in narrow limits.

4. The neurotic need for power.

5. The neurotic need to exploit others.

6. The neurotic need for social recognition.

7. The neurotic need for personal admiration.

8. The neurotic need for ambition and personal achievement.

9. The neurotic need for self sufficiency and independence.

10. The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability.

All normal people experience all the above ten needs but a normal satisfies one need at a time and then

moves on to others. The neurotic person hangs on to one need even when it is not fulfilled, he still is fixated

over it and invests all his energy in it and ignores all his other needs.

In 1945, Karen Horney in her book "Our Inner Conflicts" classified ten neurotic needs in three categories.

1-Moving Towards People

2-Moving Against People

3-Moving Away from People

Let us discuss each of them

1-Moving Towards People

In this pattern of adjustment, individual moves towards people in order to satisfy his needs for affection and

approval, for a dominant partner to control one's life and to live one's life within narrow limits. This is a

type of person who is complaint type, who says that if I give in, I shall not be hurt. This type of person

needs to be liked, wanted, desired, loved, welcomed, approved, appreciated, to be helped, to be protected,

to be taken care of and to be guided. This type of person is friendly, most of the time and represses his

aggression.

2-Moving Against People

In this adjustment mode, the neurotic need for power for exploitation of others is for prestige and for

personal achievements are to be fulfilled, when an individual moves against people. This is a hostile type of

a person who thinks that if he has power, no one can hurt him.

3-Moving Away from People

In this adjustment mode, the neurotic need for self sufficiency, perfection, independence and UN-assail

ability are classified. This person is a detached type, who says that if I withdraw, nothing can hurt me.

These three adjustment patterns are basically are incompatible, for example, one cannot move against,

towards and away from people at the same time. The normal person has greater flexibility he uses one

adjustment mode to another as conditions and situations demand. The neurotic person cannot easily move

from one adjustment mode to another, rather he is less flexible and ineffective in moving from one

adjustment mode to another.

Personality Psychology PSY 405

Relationship between Real Self and Ideal Self

The real self represents all those things that are true about an individual, the ideal self reflects what one

would like to become. So the real self is the actual you and the ideal self is that what you aspire to become.

The relationship between real self and ideal self is important. The real self and the ideals self actually are

the two sides of the same coin. For the normal person, the real self and the ideal self are closely related and

not far apart. Whereas for the neurotic persons, the real self and the ideal self are far away and the ideal self

is un-realistic, un-reachable more of a dream. So ideal self is like an illusion that does not reflect a reality

and that needs to be changed and modified. For the normal person, the ideal self is realist, changeable and

reachable.

Adjustment Techniques

Freud's ego defense mechanisms and Karen Horney's adjustment techniques are the same. However, Karen

Horney has added few new and usable techniques of adjustment which are:

1-Blind Spots

Let us take an example, you are extremely intelligent student and you responded to your teacher's question

very stupidly, so this experience hurts your ego. Therefore, you are going to deny it and ignore it because it

is not in accordance with your idealized self image of an intelligent person. Now this experience is a

disowned one and it will reappear as a blind spot in your personality. You will not accept it and it will

reappear as a problem in your personality. This is similar to Sigmund Freud's repression.

2-Rationalization

It is giving good reasons or making good excuses to protect your ego. So rationalization by Freud and

Horney are the same. Let's take an example: A student works very hard for CSS but fails in it. He says, "I

don't want to be a civil servant, all civil servants are corrupt since I am an honest person I do not want to be

a civil servant". The story of the fox and the grapes is another example of rationalization.

3-Excessive Self-Control

Excessive self-control is actually rigid self control at all costs. Guarding one's self, against anxiety by

controlling, any expression of emotion. In real life a puritan character has been created who maintains tight

emotional control under all circumstances.

Example

An individual under extreme grief and depression expresses no emotion.

An individual under state of extreme happiness shows no emotion.

4-Compartmentalization

It means dividing your life in to various compartments, one set of rules controls one compartment and

another set of rules controls another compartment. For example, a teacher does not permit his students to

cheat in the class, but the same teacher while playing a game of cards cheats with his colleagues. So there is

one set of rules which applies to one compartment and another set of rules which applies to another

compartment of his personality.

5 - Externalization

Externalization is similar to Freud's projection. In projection, individual blames others for his own

shortcoming. For example, a student did not prepare for his exams properly, and after getting a low grade,

would say, the teacher was against me or the question paper was out of the course, instead of seeing the fact

that the preparation was insufficient. Our team lost the match, because the umpire was against us while the

fact is that our penalty corner conversion was poor.

6- Arbitrary Rightness

To the person utilizing this adjustment technique, the worst thing a person can be is indecisive or

ambiguous. When issues arise that have no clear solution one way or the other, the person arbitrarily

chooses one solution, thereby ending debate. An example would be when a mother says "You're not going

out Friday night and that's the end of it" A person using this adjustment will arrive at a position and when

Personality Psychology PSY 405

doing so all debate ends. The position the person takes becomes the truth and therefore cannot be

challenged. The person no longer needs to worry about what is right and wrong or what is certain and

uncertain.

7 - Elusiveness

This technique is the opposite of arbitrary rightness. The elusive person never makes a decision about any

thing. If one is never committed to anything, one can never be wrong, and if one is never wrong, one can

never be criticized. If a person decides to go to college and fails, there is no excuse. If, however, the

decision to go to college is delayed, because of lack of money, or any other reason, this technique is called

elusiveness, where the person never makes a decision about any thing.

8 - Cynicism

Cynics are individuals who do not believe in the value of any thing rather they try to make every individual

realize the meaninglessness of their goals and objectives. Karen Horney believed that Cynics are

individuals who derive pleasure by making an individual realize that he is worthless and his goals and aims

in life are meaningless.

Goal of Psychotherapy

In her book called Self Analysis, Karen Horney says, "that many people do not have emotional problems

because they learn to minimize conflict and try to maintain a relationship between their real and ideal self.

So the goal of psychotherapy is create a realistic relationship between the real self and ideal self." Those

people who accept themselves what they really are, they develop realistic goals for future and they have

peace and harmony with themselves.

Comparison of Freud and Karen Horney:

KAREN HORNEY

FREUD

For Karen Horney, child's relationship to his

For Freud, early childhood experiences are

parents is very important and that determines

extremely important because personality

whether or not the child would develop the

development takes place in the early years of

basic anxiety.

childhood.

Freud emphasized the importance of For Karen Horney, basic anxiety leads to

unconscious motivation in the development of development of neurosis and causes basic

personality.

hostility, which is unconscious.

For Freud, all conflicts attempted to satisfy Karen Horney deemphasized the biological

biological drives. His emphasis on sex and motives and focused on a need for a feeling of

aggression as the primary biological motive.

security in the child is important.

For Freud, males are superior and he discussed Karen Horney totally rejected this concept and

the Electra complex and Oedipus complex in said that anatomy is not destiny. Males are not

detail.

superior. They are equal to females.

For Freud, personality changed rarely takes While for Karen Horney all of us have capacity

place in adult life.

to change in fundamental ways.

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