NEO-FREUDIANS:Ten Neurotic Needs, Modes of Experiencing

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Theory and Practice of Counseling - PSY632

LESSON 27

NEO-FREUDIANS

Link to Previous Lecture: Evaluation of Jungian Analytical Psychology

Strengths

· His interest in Eastern philosophy, mystical religions, and mythology brought him in contact

with many great thinkers of the 20th century. He was a great opponent of the connection

between mind, body and soul.

· Significant contributions to the fields of sand play therapy, and art therapy

Limitations

· Suitable for those who can spend money, time and effort

· The process is nonreplicable, confidential, and based on individual and archetypal process

Karen Horney (1885-1952)

Karen Horney was Born in a village near Hamburg, Germany, and excelled in her medical studies

and got a degree from the University of Berlin in 1913. She was second born child and from an early

age envied her older brother. She thought that her parents loved him more than they loved her. As a

way of retaining her mother's love, she acted as the adoring daughter and until the age of 8 she was

the model child but she did not get what she desired. Her good behavior was not working so she

changed tactics and became rebellious and ambitious. However, her quest for love continued

throughout her life. As an adult she realized how much hostility she had developed as a child. Roots

of Horney's personality theory lie in her childhood experiences. Her personality theory states how a

lack of love in childhood fosters anxiety and hostility.

View of Human Nature

Horney parted with Freud over his deterministic mechanistic approach and his emphasis on

instinctual drives. She emphasized, instead, the concept of anxiety, which she felt grew out of the

child's feeling of isolation and insecurities in the parent-child relationship, with anxiety being

produced by anything that disturbs the child's fundamental security. To Horney the insecure

children handle their feelings by developing irrational (neurotic) solutions to the problem? These

solutions compensate in some way for the emotional and psychological losses they have experienced

and may become permanent personality characteristics. The ten neurotic needs are listed below:

section.

Ten Neurotic Needs:

The neurotic need for affection and approval.

The neurotic need for a partner who will take over one's life.

The neurotic need to restrict one's life within narrow borders.

The neurotic need for power.

The neurotic need to exploit others.

The neurotic need for prestige.

The neurotic need for personal admiration.

The neurotic need for personal achievement.

The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence

The neurotic need for protection and unassailability.

10.

It is important to understand that, for the neurotic, these needs are not easily met. In most cases, the

need simply cannot be satisfied because of the deep inner conflict that lies at its source. After defining

the ten neurotic needs, Horney classified them into three basic orientations:

Moving toward people (need for love)

Moving away from people (need for independence)

Moving against people (need for power}

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She distinguishes between normal individuals and neurotics by stating that normal individuals resolve

their conflicts by integrating the thre e orientations, while neurotics rely exclusively on one of the

orientations. Horney feels that all conflicts are avoidable if the child is reared in a loving, accepting

home in which warmth, trust, and affection characterize the parent-child relationships.

Horney parted significantly from Freud in her view that conflict is developmental and arises out of the

individual's social surroundings. Possibly her greatest contributions were this awareness of the impact of

environment in the role of psychological dysfunction, and her identification of neurotic needs and the

psychological dynamics involved in neuroses.

During her self-analysis, Horney was strongly influenced by Adler's notion of compensation for

inferiority. Adler. She concluded that she also needed to feel superior because of the lack of beauty and

sense of inferiority as a woman, which led her to masculine protest by excelling in a male-dominant

profession, such as medicine at that time.

Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949)

Harry Stack Sullivan differs greatly from Adler and Horney both in his background and training and

in his theoretical views. Sullivan was born and trained in America and never had direct contact with

Freud. His unique approach in psychiatry was the first to emphasize the role of interpersonal

relationships. He describes his approach and theory in The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry (Sullivan, 3953).

His views of the importance both of interpersonal relationships and of the role of the therapist as an

involved participant in the interview have significantly influenced present counseling theory and practice.

View of Human Nature

According to Sullivan, personality exists only through the individual's interactions with others.

Processes such as thinking, perceiving, and even dreaming are considered to the interpersonal.

The self system develops out of the anxiety experienced in interpersonal relationships, which originally

stems from the mother- infant relationship. Individuals learn that if they please their parents, they

will be praised (the good-me self), and that if they misbehave, they will be punished (the bad-me

self). The self protects from anxiety and guards security.

The self-system will avoid information that is not consistent with its organization, and thus it is

protected from criticism. The self-system may lose its ability to be objective and may prevent the

individual from accurately assessing his behavior.

If the individual experiences much anxiety, the self-system will become inflated and will prevent the

individual from growing and interacting with others in healthy relationships. Here we see some possible

antecedents of Rogers' self theory and note the link between Freud's view that while anxiety stems from

different sources, the ego (self) deals with it by distorting reality through use of the defense

mechanisms.

Modes of Experiencing

Some people believe that Sullivan's most unique contributions were in the area of cognitive

processes. He delineated the following three modes of experiencing: prototaxic, parataxic and syntaxic.

· Prototaxic Involves experiences that have no connection or meaning for the experiencing

individual. Infants undergo this kind of experiencing.

· Parataxic involves seeing a relationship between events that occur simultaneously, but that

have no actual relationship. Superstitions are examples of parataxic thought processes.

· Syntaxic involves the use of language in which commonly agreed-upon verbal symbols

enable communication.

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Stages of Development of Personality

Sullivan's theory of personality emphasized stages of development but differed from Freudian thinking

with regard to the role of sexuality. His views are somewhat similar to those of Erickson in their

emphasis on interpersonal influences. His view of development emphasized social factors and

consisted of the following six stages:

· Infancy

· Childhood

· Juvenile era: The children's experience with friends and teachers begins to rival the influence of

parents. Social influence becomes important and child's "reputation" with others becomes an

important source of self-esteem or anxiety.

· Preadolescence: During preadolescence, a relationship to a closer friend or chum becomes

particularly important. This relationship provides basis for the development of a love

relationship with the opposite sex.

· Early adolescence

· Late adolescence

Role of the Counselor/ Therapeutic interview

One of Sullivan's major contributions was his view of the therapeutic interview. He made a significant

departure from Freud and the so-called neo-analysts in viewing the interview as a highly personal and

interpersonal experience in which the therapist functions as a "participant observer." The role of the

therapist as conceptualized by Sullivan emphasizes the therapist as a person, with a focus on the

communication between the therapist and patient. In other words, Sullivan acknowledged that the

therapist's attitudes, feelings, doubts, or personal difficulties influence the interaction in the

interview. Obviously, then, the therapist cannot assume a strictly observational stance.

The psychiatric interview consists of four stages:

· The formal inception

· Reconnaissance

· Detailed inquiry

· The termination

These stages are briefly summarized as follows:

The Formal Inception

o The therapist is viewed as an interpersonal relations expert. In the initial phase of

therapy, the primary task is to determine the nature of the patient's problem and to

begin a communication process in which the therapist is sensitive to nonverbal

behavior, including voice tone, speech rate, and changes in volume. Sullivan

emphasized that the patient has a right to expect to benefit from the experience,

even from the initial session. Emphasis is placed on relationship building.

Reconnaissance

o During this phase the therapist structures sessions to gather factual information about

the past, present, and future of the patient. The goal is to develop some hypotheses

regarding the patient's problems,

The Detailed Inquiry

o Both questioning and listening are techniques that assist the therapist in sorting through

tentative hypotheses and selecting the one that is most accurate. Information

regarding the patient's functioning in all areas is collected.

The Termination

o A summary of the therapist's learning's about and observations of the patient

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characterizes this last stage. The therapist may also prescribe some guidelines for the

patient following termination.

As previously stated, Sullivan's influence on contemporary counseling theory and practice is most

obvious in his humanistic view of the psychiatric interview. He was a very creative thinker and was

among the first to change the role of the therapist from a removed observer and interpreter of the

patient's experience, to an active, involved participant in an interpersonal relationship. His emphasis

on the therapist as a person and on the power of the relationship in facilitating client change was

probably an antecedent of humanistic thinking, which resulted in the development of client-centered

therapy.

Evaluation

· He was a very creative thinker and was among the first to change the role of the therapist from a remote

observer and interpreter of the patient's experience, to an active, involved participant in an interpersonal

relationship.

· His emphasis on the therapist as a person and on the power of the relationship in facilitating client

change was probably an antecedent of humanistic thinking, which resulted in the development of client-

centered therapy.

Summary: Traditional Psychoanalysis and Neo-Freudians

The current and previous few lectures aimed to explore Freudian theory, the contributions of Adler,

Jung, Horney, and Sullivan, who are important links to present counseling practice.

In the section on Freud, we discussed his view that personality is a complex energy system

consisting of the driving forces of the id and the restraining forces of the ego and superego. The

reservoir of psychic energy is housed in the id, which functions by the pleasure principle. The

instinctual impulses of the id are mediated by the ego and the superego, as well as by the external

world. Personality, then, is a highly mechanistic and deterministic system, and behavior is largely a

result of instinctual drives and unconscious processes. When the ego can no longer satisfy the

demands of the ego and is flooded with anxiety, it employs defense mechanisms to enable it to cope.

Repression, projection, reaction formation, fixation, and regression were discussed, along with several

other commonly used defense mechanisms. Freud believed that personality developed in five

psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital, He utilized techniques such as

interpretation, dream analysis, transference, and free association.

Each of the other theorists discussed in later lectures departed in some important way from Freudian

thinking. Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan developed social-psychological

views which rejected Freud's view of sexuality, placed greater emphasis on environmental and

interpersonal factors. Jungian analysis is much more philosophical in nature and focuses on not only

individual unconscious but collective unconscious consisting on archetypes. While Freudian theory

differs in many ways from the contemporary affective approaches to counseling (which will be taught

in the next few lectures), there are some interesting linkages between Freud and Rogers, the

counseling theorist who most significantly departed from Freudian thought.

The importance placed on feelings is the most obvious similarity between Freud and Rogers. Freud

used techniques with both cognitive components (recall of early memories, interpretation, and

making the unconscious conscious) and affective ones (transference and the corrective emotional

experience) to facilitate client insight. It is important to note, however, that insight involved more

than cognitive understanding.

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