Karen Horney: The Neurotic Personality Of Our Time

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The neurotic hesitates in his self-esteem between feelings of greatness and worthlessness.

The conflict situation of a neurotic person stems from a desperate and obsessive desire to be first and from an equally strong obsessive urge to restrain oneself.

Neurotics cannot express their desires or cannot refuse a request to others. They have internal prohibitions on doing something in their own interests: expressing their opinion, asking someone to do something, choosing and agreeing with someone, establishing pleasant contacts. They also cannot defend themselves against persistent requests, they cannot say no.

Love in itself is not an illusion, despite the fact that in our culture it most often serves as a screen for satisfying desires that have nothing to do with it; but it turns into an illusion, since we expect from it much more than it is able to give.

The difference between love and the neurotic need for love lies in the fact that the main thing in love is the feeling of attachment itself, while in the neurotic the primary feeling is the need to gain confidence and calmness, and the illusion of love is only secondary.

In addition, there is a marked contradiction between their desire to receive love from others and their own ability to nourish this feeling.

The neurotic need for love and affection can be focused on one person - husband, wife, doctor, friend. When this is the case, the person's affection, interest, friendship and presence are of paramount importance. However, the importance of this person is paradoxical. On the one hand, the neurotic tries to attract the interest of such a person, to get him, fears the loss of his love and feels rejected if he is not around; on the other hand, he does not experience happiness at all when he is with his “idol”.

The neurotic need for love and affection often takes the form of sexual passion or an insatiable need for sexual gratification.

Basal anxiety means that, due to inner weakness, a person feels a desire to shift all responsibility onto others, to receive protection and care from them; at the same time, due to the basal hostility, he experiences too deep distrust to fulfill this desire. And the inevitable consequence of this is that he has to spend the lion's share of his energy to calm down and build self-confidence.

The neurotic fluctuates in his self-esteem between feelings of greatness and worthlessness.

A neurotic may simultaneously experience an urgent need to command others and want to be loved, and at the same time strive for submission, while imposing his will on others, and also avoid people, without giving up the desire to be loved by them. It is these absolutely insoluble conflicts that are usually the dynamic center of neuroses.

The obsession with excellence develops largely out of the need to avoid any kind of disapproval.

A person whose sexual needs increase under the unconscious influence of anxiety is naively inclined to attribute the intensity of his sexual needs to an innate temperament or freedom from generally accepted taboos. In doing this, he is making the same mistake as people who overestimate their need for sleep, imagining that their constitution requires ten or more hours of sleep, while in reality their increased need for sleep can be caused by various who do not find release emotions. Sleep can serve as one of the means to escape all conflicts.

If the neurotic is kept waiting, they interpret it in such a way that they are considered so insignificant that they do not feel the need to be punctual with them; and this can cause outbursts of hostile feelings or lead to a complete detachment from all feelings, so that they become cold and indifferent, even if a few minutes ago they might have been looking forward to meeting them.

The neurotic is always on the alert against other people, believing that any interest they show in third parties means disregard for him. The neurotic interprets any demand as betrayal, and any criticism as humiliation.

The neurotic does not realize how much of his painful sensitivity, his latent hostility, his picky demands interfere with his own relationships.

Neurotic parents are usually unhappy with their lives, lack satisfying emotional or sexual relationships, and therefore tend to make their children the objects of their love. They pour out their need for love on children.

Adherence to parenting theories, overprotection or self-sacrifice on the part of the "ideal" mother are the main factors that create an atmosphere that, more than anything else, lays the foundation for feelings of great insecurity in the future.

A neurotic person may experience a sense of dread as he approaches the realization that genuine love is being offered to him.

A child can endure a lot of what is often referred to as traumatic factors: sudden weaning, periodic beatings, sexual experiences - but all this as long as in his soul he feels that he is desired and loved.

Talking about the neurotic's tendency to shift blame onto others can give rise to misunderstandings. He may be perceived as if his accusations are unfounded. In fact, he has very good reasons for accusing him because he was treated unfairly, especially as a child. But there are also neurotic elements in his accusations; they often take the place of constructive efforts leading to positive goals and are usually reckless. For example, a neurotic may push them against people who sincerely want to help him, and at the same time, he may be completely unable to assign blame and voice his accusations against those people who do wrong.

Neurotic jealousy also distinguishes the neurotic, it is dictated by the constant fear of losing a loved one, although the partner gives absolutely no reason for such jealousy. This type of jealousy can be manifested on the part of parents towards their children, if they seek to marry, or, conversely, on the part of children, when one of the parents wants to marry.

Neurotic suffering, insofar as it performs these functions, is not what the individual wants, but what he pays. As for the satisfaction to which he aspires, then this is not suffering in the proper sense of the word, but the rejection of his "I".

In our culture, there are four main ways to avoid anxiety: rationalizing it; its denial; attempts to drown her with drugs; avoidance of thoughts, feelings, urges or situations that cause it.

I do not think that one can understand any serious neurosis without realizing the paralyzing helplessness that is associated with it. Some neurotic people express their irritation explicitly, while in others it is deeply hidden behind submissiveness or ostentatious optimism. And then it can be very difficult to discern that behind all these claims, strange vanity, hostile relations, there is a human being who suffers and feels himself forever separated from everything that makes life attractive, who knows that even if he achieves what he wants, it still doesn’t. can get pleasure from it. A person for whom every possibility of happiness is closed would have to be a real angel, if he did not feel hatred for the world, to which he cannot belong.