Karen Danielson was born on September 16, 1885 to Berndt Wackels Danielson and Clotilde née van Ronzelen in Blankenese, Germany. At the age of nine, Karen developed a crush on one of her older brothers who soon pushed her away leading her to begin suffering from depression effecting her for the rest of her life. After her mother left her father, Karen entered medical school at University of Freiburg, she transferred to one other school before graduating from University of Berlin in 1913. She married Oskar Horney in 1909 which is how she became known as Karen Horney. She moved from Germany to Brooklyn in 1930. She quickly established herself and became the Associate Director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. It was in Brooklyn where she developed and advanced her composite theories regarding neurosis and personality. Agreeing with Freud that childhood was important, Karen Horney thought that childhood social, not sexual, tensions are crucial for personality formations. The relationship between a child and his/her parents determines the way they will behave later in life. Horney thought childhood was dominated by the safety need, by which she meant the need for security and freedom from fear (Horney, 1937). The major way to weaken or prevent security is by not exhibiting warmth and affection to the child. “The basic evil is invariably a lack of genuine warmth and affection” (Karen Horney). As children we use four tactic to protect ourselves from basic anxiety. These include securing love and affection, being submissive, attaining power, and withdrawing. These mechanisms promote individuals to seek security rather than happiness and pleasure. They may also reduce anxiety, but prove to be detrimental to the person’s personality. Horney, believing that neurosis was a result from basic anxiety caused by interpersonal relationships, developed a theory for neurosis that contained 10 patterns of neurotic needs. Basic anxiety was defined by Karen Horney as an “insidiously increasing, all-pervading feeling of being lonely and helpless in a hostile world” (Horney, 1945). Each of the 10 patterns can be broken down into three broad categories: needs that move you towards others, needs that move you away from others, and needs that move you against others. Horney concluded that these coping strategies can become overused taking on the persona of needs. In Horney’s opinion neurotic people tend to utilize one or more of these interpersonal styles. Moving towards others consists of the need for affection and approval, and the need for a partner. Moving away from others, contained the need for self-sufficiency and independence, the need for practice and unassailability, and the need to restrict one’s life. Moving against others, composed of the need for power, the need to exploit others, the need for prestige, the need for personal admiration, and the need for personal achievement. People with a compliance personality are under the category of moving towards people. Children facing difficulties with parents often use this strategy. They tend to want affection and approval from their peers. The aggression personality is the category of moving against people. Neurotic children or adults within this category usually show anger or basic hostility to those
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“The view that women are infantile and emotional creatures, and as such, incapable of responsibility and independence is the work of the masculine tendency to lower women’s self-respect” (Feminine Psychology, 1932). Freud believed that women had poor superegos and suffered “penis envy”. He suggested that women were resentful of men for having a penis and felt inferior. Horney rebutted this claim by saying men suffered from “womb envy”. The degree to how a man is driven to succeed may simply be a substitute for the fact that they are not able to carry, nurture and bear children. They were jealous of the woman’s ability to have a child. Womb envy is created unconsciously to make women feel inferior. Horney did not deny that women may feel inferior to men, instead she questioned Freud’s reasoning on why women had those feelings. She believed that women felt inferior to men because of societal reasons rather than being born a woman. This belief of inferiority may cause a women to wish she were a man. Horney called this the flight of womanhood, a condition that can lead to sexual
“The view that women are infantile and emotional creatures, and as such, incapable of responsibility and independence is the work of the masculine tendency to lower women’s self-respect” (Feminine Psychology, 1932). Freud believed that women had poor superegos and suffered “penis envy”. He suggested that women were resentful of men for having a penis and felt inferior. Horney rebutted this claim by saying men suffered from “womb envy”. The degree to how a man is driven to succeed may simply be a substitute for the fact that they are not able to carry, nurture and bear children. They were jealous of the woman’s ability to have a child. Womb envy is created unconsciously to make women feel inferior. Horney did not deny that women may feel inferior to men, instead she questioned Freud’s reasoning on why women had those feelings. She believed that women felt inferior to men because of societal reasons rather than being born a woman. This belief of inferiority may cause a women to wish she were a man. Horney called this the flight of womanhood, a condition that can lead to sexual