Psychoanalytic Social Theory

Psychoanalytic Social Theory

• Karen Horney is the theorist behind psychoanalytic social theory.
• Presented by Şevval Babacan, Ahmet Emre Saka, Recep Hamza Deniz, Mazlum Usun, Başak Lambaoğlu, and Eren Türk.

Context of Psychoanalytic Social Theory

• Psychoanalytic social theory covers the following topics, in order:
  • Overview
  • Biography of Karen Horney
  • Introduction
  • Basic Hostility and Basic Anxiety
  • Compulsive Drives
  • Intrapsychic Conflicts
  • Feminine Psychology
  • Psychotherapy
  • Related Research
  • Critique of Horney
  • Concept of Humanity
  • Case Study

Overview of Theory

• Horney's ideas about personality were influenced by her own life experiences.
• Social and cultural conditions, particularly childhood experiences, play a significant role in shaping personality.
• If a child's need for love and affection is unmet, they may develop basic anxiety and basic hostility.

Biography of Karen Horney

• Born on September 15, 1885, in Germany
• Her father was strict and religious, while she idolized her mother who supported her against her father.
• Horney pursued her dream of becoming a physician, despite her father's objections
• She entered medical school at the University of Freiburg in 1906 and later specialized in psychiatry.
• Horney married Oskar Horney, a political science student.
• She became deeply interested in psychoanalysis and underwent analysis with Karl Abraham, a close associate of Sigmund Freud.
• Horney initially supported Freudian theory but later developed her own ideas.
• She divorced in 1938 and entered the most productive period of her life.
• Horney moved to New York and joined the New School for Social Research.
• She became part of an intellectual circle that included Erich Fromm, with whom she had a long and influential relationship.
• In 1939, she published "New Ways in Psychoanalysis," which openly criticized Freud
• She called for a greater focus on ego and social influences.
• Horney resigned from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute in 1941 due to tensions
• She formed the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (AAP).
• Internal conflicts, including a split with Fromm, weakened the AAP, but it later became the Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Institute.
• In 1950, she published "Neurosis and Human Growth," which fully expressed her independent theories.
• In 1952, she founded the Karen Horney Clinic.
• Horney passed away on December 4, 1952, at the age of 65.

Introduction to Psychoanalytic Social Theory

• Horney's early writings were similar to Freud's, however, she later developed her own views, like Adler and Jung.
• She agreed with Freud that early childhood traumas are important
• She believed that social forces, not biological ones, are the most important in shaping personality.

Comparison of Horney and Freud

• Horney disagreed with Freud's ideas about feminine psychology.
• Horney stated that "Man is ruled not by the pleasure principle alone but by two guiding principles: safety and satisfaction."
• She described personality development as an attempt to navigate a dangerous wilderness created by society, not instincts or biology.
• Horney considered Freud's ideas pessimistic and driven by fixed instincts.
• Horney's view was more optimistic, based on cultural forces that can change.

Culture

• Horney believed that modern culture is based on competition, where everyone is a real or potential competitor.

• People develop a strong need for love and affection due to feeling alone, leading them to overvalue love as a solution.

• Western society worsens this problem in several ways:

  • Conflicting Values: People are taught to be humble while society encourages aggressiveness and competitiveness.
  • Never-Ending Success Pressure: Society constantly pushes people to achieve more
  • False Freedom: Society teaches that hard work leads to success, but genetics, social class, and competition limit most people's freedom and opportunities.

Childhood Experience

• A difficult childhood is primarily responsible for creating neurotic needs, which are the child's way of feeling safe.
• No single event in childhood fully determines later personality.
• Childhood experiences are mainly responsible for personality development, but later experiences can have an impact.
• People who repeat certain behaviors do so because they interpret new experiences similarly to past experiences.

Basic Hostility

• When a child's emotional needs of love, security, and protection are unmet, they feel anger and resentment toward their caregivers.
• Expressing anger is dangerous since the child depends on their caregivers.
• Instead of confronting parents, the child suppresses hostility, leading to unconscious conflict.

Basic Anxiety

• Suppressed hostility transforms into a deep feeling of insecurity and fear.
• The child views the world as threatening and unpredictable, developing coping strategies.
• This cycle of hostility and anxiety forms the foundation for neurotic behaviors in adulthood.

Causes of Basic Hostility and Basic Anxiety

• Parental behaviors like neglect, overprotection, rejection, and indulgence without discipline can cause basic hostility and anxiety.
• The child is caught in a dilemma, resenting caregivers but fearing the loss of their love.
• This inner conflict shapes future relationships and leads to neurotic personality traits.

How Basic Hostility Leads to Anxiety

• A child feels hostility toward their caregivers.
• The hostility is repressed due to fear of losing support.
• Repressed hostility creates anxiety and a deep sense of insecurity.
• Anxiety fuels more hostility, making the person emotionally unstable.
• To cope, the person develops unhealthy defense mechanisms.

Defense Mechanisms Against Anxiety

To manage anxiety, people develop four main defense mechanisms:

• Affection: Seeking approval and love to feel secure.
• Submissiveness: Yielding to others (or institutions) to gain protection.
• Power: Dominating or controlling others to feel safe.
• Withdrawal: Emotionally detaching from relationships to avoid vulnerability.

Neurotic Needs

As a result of basic anxiety, people develop 10 neurotic needs:

• The need for affection and approval
• The need for a powerful partner
• The need to restrict one's life within narrow limits
• The need for power
• The need to exploit others
• The need for social recognition and prestige
• The need for personal admiration
• The need for personal achievement
• The need for self-sufficiency and independence
• The need for perfection and unassailability

Neurotic Trends

In 1945, Horney grouped the 10 neurotic needs into 3 major trends:

• Moving Toward People (Compliant Personality): Seeking love, approval, and protection from others.
• Moving Against People (Aggressive Personality): Seeking power, control, and dominance over others.
• Moving Away from People (Detached Personality): Avoiding relationships and emotional dependence.

Moving Toward People

• People who rely on others for validation and security
• They seek strong relationships to avoid loneliness.
• People who suppress their hostility to maintain relationships
• Related concept: Morbid dependency (codependency)

Moving Against People

• People who view others as competitors or threats.
• They focus on power, prestige, and success at any cost.
• Includes five neurotic needs of seeking power, exploitation, prestige, admiration, and achievement.
• They appear confident but are driven by deep anxiety.

Moving Away From People

• People who avoid relationships and emotional connections.
• They value independence, perfectionism, and self-sufficiency.
• Biggest fear is needing others.
• This behavior leads to emotional isolation and difficulty forming close bonds.

Intrapsychic Conflicts

• Stem from basic anxiety due to early relationships
• Horney emphasized both interpersonal and internal conflicts
• Two key intrapsychic conflicts: idealized self-image and self-hatred

Idealized Self-Image

• An unrealistic self-view created to counter feelings of isolation and inferiority.
• Different forms for different personality types:
  • Compliant: Good and saintly
  • Aggressive: Strong and heroic
  • Detached: Wise and independent

Aspects of the Idealized Self-Image

• This is an inflated, unrealistic view to counter feelings of insecurity.
• It is composed of three elements: neurotic search for glory, neurotic claims, and neurotic pride.
• It disconnects individuals from their real selves, creating a gap that leads to alienation.

Neurotic Search for Glory

• Drive to actualize the ideal self
• Includes three elements:
  • Need for Perfection: Tyranny of the "shoulds"
  • Neurotic Ambition: Compulsive drive for superiority
  • Vindictive Triumph: Desire to shame and defeat others

Neurotic Claims

• Belief in entitlement due to the idealized self
• Creates a fantasy world detached from reality
• Leads to feelings of indignation when demands are unmet

Neurotic Pride

• False pride is based on an idealized image.
• It is different from genuine self-esteem.
• It causes sensitivity to how others view them

Self-Hatred

• Arises from the gap between real and idealized selves
• Six expressions of self-hatred:
  • Relentless demands on self
  • Merciless self-accusation
  • Self-contempt
  • Self-frustration
  • Self-torment
  • Self-destructive actions

Feminine Psychology

• Horney rejected Freud's anatomical focus.
• She emphasized cultural and social influences.
• She criticized concepts like the Oedipus complex and penis envy.
• Horney believed that the standards of masculinity and femininity are artificial

Psychotherapy

• Horney thought that neuroses come from a fundamental inner conflict that usually begins in childhood.
• To deal with this conflict, people adopt one of three neurotic trends: moving toward, against, or away from others.
• These strategies offer temporary relief but ultimately pull people further away from their real self and deeper into neurosis.

Goal of Therapy

• The aim of Horneyian therapy is to help patients rediscover their real self by letting go of their idealized self-image, abandoning their neurotic search for glory and transforming self-hatred into self-acceptance.
• Patients often resist change because they believe their neurotic behaviors are healthy and necessary.
• The ultimate goal is self-analysis—helping patients become their own therapists.

Role of the Therapist

• The therapist guides patients towards self-awareness, showing them how their coping strategies reinforce their struggles.
• Therapy is not about quick fixes; real change requires deep emotional understanding.

Techniques In Therapy

Dream Interpretation:

• Dreams are seen as attempts to resolve inner conflicts.
• They can reveal both neurotic tendencies and healthy insights.

Free Association:

• Patients speak without filtering their thoughts, revealing their idealized self-image and struggles.
• Over time, this exposes the gap between their real self and the false identity they have created.

Related Research

• Horney's psychoanalytic social theory has not directly led to extensive research in modern personality psychology.
• However, her concept of neurotic trends are highly relevant to current studies on neuroticism.

The Neurotic Compulsion to Avoid Negative

• Research on neuroticism highlights its negative effects which include neurotic individuals experiencing higher levels of anxiety.
• Neurotic people are more likely to set avoidance goals (avoiding failure) instead of approach goals (seeking success).
• Neurotics are trapped in a defensive cycle, constantly protecting themselves from basic anxiety.
• This mindset prevents personal growth and keeps them stuck in fear-based thinking.

Study on Successful Neurotics

• The study aimed to answer whether neurotic people can use their anxiety productively and tested 181 participants for neuroticism.
• In this test participants were given a computer-based threat detection task.
• Participants identified whether words (e.g., "knife" vs. "stench") represented a threat.
• Reaction times and accuracy were recorded.
• Adjustment speed was measured after errors were made.

Critique of Horney

• Horney's theory provides a deep understanding of neurosis, but it lacks extensive research support.
• Her strength lies in her detailed descriptions of neurotic personalities, making her work highly valuable for understanding mental illness.
• However, she focused almost entirely on neurosis, offering little insight into healthy personality development.

Limitations of Horney's Study

• Horney suggested that people naturally strive for self-realization, but she did not provide a clear definition of this.
• Her ideas don't generate testable hypotheses, making them difficult to verify or falsify.
• Horney's is based mostly on clinical observations of neurotic individuals, it does not explain general human behavior well.

Practical Applications

• Educators, therapists, and parents can use her ideas to create a supportive and accepting environment for children and patients.
• However, her theory lacks specific guidance on how to apply these principles in practice.

Consistency & Clarity

• Horney's final theory (1950) is precise and well-structured.
• However, across her earlier works, she used terms inconsistently, such as "neurotic needs" and "neurotic trends" interchangeably.

Overall Evaluation

• Clear insights into neurotic personality development
• There is limited applicability to healthy individuals, however the research is difficult to test scientifically.
• Horney's last work is concise, logical, and valuable for understanding neurosis, but lacks a broader application to personality psychology.

Concept of Humanity

• Horney's view of humanity is deeply influenced by her work with neurotic patients.
• The key difference between a healthy person and a neurotic individual is the level of compulsivity in interacting with others—moving toward, against, or away from people.

Free Will vs. Determinism

• Neurotic behaviors appear compulsive (deterministic), but therapy allows individuals to regain control.
• Horney's theory leans slightly toward free choice, and that people can change through self-awareness and effort.

Optimism vs. Pessimism

• Horney leaned towards optimism

Conscious vs. Unconscious Motivation

• People have limited awareness of their true motives.
• Neurotics, in particular, mislabel their traits.

Social vs. Biological Influences

• Culture and society shape personality more than biology, and the psychological differences between men and women come from societal expectations, not anatomy.
• Horney rejected Freud’s Oedipus complex and penis envy, seeing them as cultural constructs rather than biological facts.

The Case: Nina Sayers

• Nina Sayers, the main character of "Black Swan," is a young ballet dancer living under immense pressure to achieve perfection.
• Her life revolves around her desire for artistic excellence, shaped by a rigid environment and a controlling mother.

Family Dynamics & Anxiety

• Basic anxiety arises from childhood experiences lacking safety and affection.
• Nina's relationship with her mother, Erica Sayers, exemplifies this.
• Erica had to quit ballet because she became pregnant, and she projects her unfulfilled ambitions onto Nina, exerting strict control over her life.
• This oppressive parental influence and lack of emotional freedom create an environment of fear and dependency, fostering Nina's basic anxiety.

Neurotic Needs in Nina

• Need for Perfection and Unassailability due to her obsession with flawless performance mirrors a relentless pursuit of perfection, with any mistake threatening her self-worth.
• Need for Affection and Approval since her desperate need for validation from her director, Thomas Leroy, reflects an externalization of self-worth.
• Need for Self-Sufficiency since she isolates herself emotionally, trying to maintain control over her psyche.

Nina and Neurotic Trends

• Nina follows Horney's Moving Toward People trend, compulsively seeking approval and affection from authority figures like Thomas and her mother, viewing their validation as essential to her self-worth.
• Nina shifts between trends to cope with anxiety.
• She Moves Against People, seeing Lily as a rival.
• Worsening Paranoia causes Nina to Move Away From People because she withdraws into isolation and experiences hallucinations and self-destructive behavior.
• Her dependence on external validation and struggle in balancing highlight her neurotic struggle and inner conflict in her attempt to maintain control.

The Real vs. Ideal Self

• Nina's idealized self-image as the "perfect ballerina" fuels a neurotic drive for perfection, and embodying the White Swan is essential to her self-worth.
• The meaning of the Black Swan is symbolises repressed emotions like anger, sexuality, and ambition threatening her fragile identity.
• Self-hatred, hallucinations, and psychological breakdown come from widening gap between her real and ideal self.
• Embracing the Black Swan achieves satisfaction at the cost of her sanity and life through self-destruction.

Environmental Influence and Basic Hostility

• Hyper-competitive world of professional ballet amplifies insecurities.

• Constant scrutiny from peers, emotional manipulation by Thomas, and her mother's stifling control breed basic hostility within Nina Sayers.

• She suppresses her basic hostility until it explodes and manifests in hallucinations and violent actions.

Feminine Psychology

• Horney's insights into feminine psychology reveal Nina's inner conflict between societal expectations and personal identity.
• The ballet environment demands grace and submission, whereas the Black Swan role demands power and seduction.
• Nina's descent into madness mirrors her struggle to reconcile these opposing forces.

Conclusion

• The character Nina Sayers' basic anxiety, neurotic needs, and inner conflict between the real and idealized self culminate in a tragic psychological breakdown.
• The "Black Swan" symbolizes her final surrender to the destructive forces within her psyche
• The film showcases devastating impact of unresolved childhood anxieties and environmental pressures.

Questions

• How can Nina's self-hatred be explained within the framework of Horney's theory? What are the origins of this hatred?
• How can the conflict between Nina's roles as white swan and black swan be interpreted in terms of feminine identity and societal expectations?
• How does the professional ballet environment feed Nina's basic feelings of hostility and anxiety?