Basic Anxiety: Infants and young children are highly independent upon their parents not just for survival, but for a sense of psychological security. If the infant (child) senses that they are loved, and protected, their safely needs are met. Under less than desirable circumstances, children feel intensely vulnerable and helpless, especially in the absences of adequate parenting, and such circumstances produce “basic anxiety”…which Horney describes as “the feeling of being isolated and helpless in a potentially hostile world”. Includes three major components: Helplessness, Aggressiveness, and Detachment resulting from pathogenic family influences during childhood. HORNEY

Basic Hostility: Feelings of anger in young children toward their parents, which must be repressed. HORNEY

Real Self: the vital center of the individual as they really are, with both shortcomings and potential for personal growth. HORNEY

Ideal Self: That which a person wishes they could be, and thinks they should be. In healthy individuals, the real self and the ideal self more or less coincide, but in the maladjusted or maladaptive individual, they are separated with a significant disparity between the two. In extreme cases, alienation may occur in which the person may abandon their real self for the sake of the ideal self. HORNEY

Collectivism: In some cultures, the predominant values of social cooperation and group goals. HORNEY

Individualism: In many Western cultures, the predominant values of individual goals and individual achievement (as contrasted with those cultures with shared goals and cooperation). HORNEY

Idealized (Self) Image: A misconception about one’s personality that is often used to conceal a despised real self or avoid difficult and painful inner conflicts (between “incompatible” orientations of one’s personality). HORNEY

Compartmentalization: A mechanism of adjustment in which incompatible behaviors are not simultaneously recognized; HORNEY

Cynicism: A mechanisms of adjustment in which the moral values of a culture or society are rejected. HORNEY

Elusiveness: A mechanism of adjustment in which a person refuses to make commitments to anyone or anything, avoids close personal relationships, and/or refuses to commit to an opinion, an action, a group, or a relationship (thus avoiding responsibilities). HORNEY

Excessive Self-Control: A mechanisms of adjustment in which employed as a technique for avoiding one’s own emotions. HORNEY

Externalization: Experiencing Intrapsychic processes as occurring outside oneself: a mechanism of adjustment in which conflicts are “projected” outside. HORNEY

Rationalization: A mechanism of adjustment by which a persons behavior are explained in a socially acceptable way. HORNEY

Tyranny of the Shoulds: A set of inner “demands” to live up to (i.e. the idealized self-image). HORNEY

Womb Envy: A set man’s jealousy and envy regarding a woman’s reproductive capacity (i.e. her ability to bear and nurse children) HORNEY

Claims: Unrealistic demands and expectations that the neurotic imposes on other people. HORNEY

Glory: Grandiose feelings of triumph because one appears to have fulfilled the demands of the idealized image. However, the neurotic quest for glory is compulsive and insatiable. HORNEY

Neurotic Conflict: An unconscious Intrapsychic clash between healthy and neurotic drives, or between opposing neurotic drives. HORNEY

Self-contempt (self hate): Hating one’s true abilities, feelings, and wishes because they differ from (and seem much worse than) the glorious idealized image. HORNEY

Self realization: Developing one’s healthy innate potentials and abilities. HORNEY

Tricotomy of Social Movement:

Three characteristics interpersonal “orientations of personality”

    • Movement Toward Others: Self Effacing Solution (The Compliant Personality): Overly values love, affection and approval; feeling weak and helpless; need for a partner to take over (lover, spouse, or friend); poor little me (need to be take care of); self-sacrificing and suffering for others; morbid dependency on others and assumption that others are superior (self-subordination) and the need to find self worth in a relationship (need to be loved).
    • Movement Away from Others: Resignation Solution (The Detached Personality): Always tries to be self-sufficient; development of considerable resourcefulness and independence; to protect privacy, prefers to be alone but often creative; rebellious against constraints or influences with tremendous need for freedom; detached from emotional experiences and wishes (an onlooker); an aversion to enforced change (or demands for effort); need for privacy, “keep others outside the circle of the self” and remain uninvolved with people ( may express feeling, but with a certain detachment); being free of social obligations.
    • Movement Against Others: Self Expansive Solutions (The Aggressive Personality):Narcissistic and in love with one’s “idealized self image”; very high standards and a “perfectionist”; a need to be socially recognized and admired; arrogant with great admiration for strength in self and others; and essential “disrespect” for others and contempt for the weak; the need to be right, the need to win a competition, or fight (can be vindictive); the need for personal admiration with great personal ambition; exert personal power over others and may be domineering (an “Authoritarian” personality); “power” and “mastery” seem to offer protection from being weak and vulnerable (love may well be seen as an unnecessary weakness)
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