International Karen Horney Society

03/27/2023

Dr. Horney (“Horn-eye,” 1885–1952) acknowledged a resemblance between her theory and Adler’s.

« Adler

According to Johnson, within the first two years of life, infants experience inexorable feelings of inferiority due to physical smallness, intellectual immaturity, poor eyesight or hearing and health problems. Adler says that to compensate for the inevitable inadequacies, they began striving for superiority which Freudians might call a reaction formation. Children raised in harsh, punitive or negligent environments create fictions that steer them away from social interest and towards mistaken lifestyles. The three mistaken lifestyles for Adler are:

The ruling type who seeks to dominate others
The getting type (goal is passive dependence)
The avoiding type who sidesteps issues
From an Adlerian perspective, dogmatic characteristics of authoritarian aggression and arrogant, dismissive communication are tendencies that evolved from the early childhood goals of the ruling type.

If the insecure child cannot gain his caretaker’s love, safety and respect, the Divine Father would surely deliver the goods. These individuals do not go to church to maximize their social interest, but rather to both maximize their psychological survival and to minimize their self-doubt. Blind obedience to an authoritarian God is a tradeoff for a secure attachment that was not experienced as a child.

Karen Horney

According to Judy Johnson, feminist psychologist Karen Horney believed that basic anxiety that is prolonged beyond the normal range of anxiety has its origins in faulty parenting which includes parents who are dominating, intimidating, irritable, over-exacting and hypercritical. The second cause of anxiety is the unhealthy hyper-competitiveness of capitalist society.

For Horney, basic anxiety would be overcome by moving with people within a more cooperative society. If a person cannot live under those conditions there are three neurotic orientations: moving towards people, moving against people and moving away from people. Johnson writes that Horney’s moving against is the most relevant to dogmatism. The neurotic becomes driven by a search for glory at the expense of a scapegoated group. The need to proselytize or dominate conversations are typical of moving against strategies.

But I see that Horney’s neurotic trend of moving towards people can apply to the dogmatist’s in-group and their authority figures. They move with obsequious conformity and obedience. They seek out authorities who seem superior and therefore capable of taking care of them. »

We examine the many causes of dogmatism – moving from sociological, to social psychological, to psychological to bioevolutionary and physiological.

11/07/2021

There is no direct reference to Dr. Horney’s work, but the idea of attachment styles seems like a possibly useful category of understanding. It would be interesting to juxtapose with the two-person “cyclical psychodynamic” perspective of Dr. Paul L. Wachtel (2014), who draws on Horneyan theory.

— IKHS

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/style/anxious-avoidant-secure-attached-book.html?referringSource=articleShare

Over a decade after its publication, one book on dating has people firmly in its grip.

06/23/2020

Questa è la Sleep Pill dell'Associazione Italiana di Medicina del Sonno (AIMS, www.sonnomed.it) dedicata ai disturbi del sonno della donna durante la gravida...

04/24/2020

Grazie a SPIGA - Karen Horney Roma per questa condivisione.

K.Horney, I nostri conflitti interni, 1945

03/24/2020

By Rob Sharf (March 23, 2020).

« Abraham’s student, the German psychoanalyst Karen Horney [“Horn-eye,” 1885–1952], who was among the first analysts to challenge Sigmund Freud’s phallocentric theories, reshaped our understanding of neurosis. One of Horney’s central ideas, expounded in her Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization, published 70 years ago, was that neurotics construct idealized images of themselves as defense mechanisms against unmanageable internal conflicts. These might include a pathological level of ambition, for example, alongside an uncontrollable need to be liked. You might picture yourself as unrealistically important as a distraction from deeper issues. But such perfectionism only perpetuates a sense of inadequacy.

Horney felt that neurosis killed productive artistic practice. In a 1950 keynote lecture at the New York Academy of Medicine, she made this clear: despite any chutzpah or élan, the neurotic artist lacks self-confidence, probably the most crucial prerequisite for creative work’. The artist’s practice suffers because of their inner turmoil. They might overrate their significance or be overly defensive, causing them exhausting inner strife. They might set their sights too high or believe that their abilities are limited. There is an abject disconnect between their self-perception and reality. »

https://frieze.com/article/why-do-we-believe-psychological-turmoil-produces-better-art

The psychoanalyst Karen Horney argued that neurosis killed productive artistic practice

02/29/2020

From 『Frieze』 magazine:

« To mark the 70th anniversary of psychoanalytic theorist Karen Horney’s lecture on the relationship between art and neurosis, Rob Sharp asks why we believe psychological turmoil produces better art. »

https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/314835/frieze-issue-209-out-now/

(I guess you have to subscribe to see Rob Sharp’s column on “why we believe psychological turmoil produces better art,” “[t]o mark the 70th anniversary of psychoanalytic theorist Karen Horney’s lecture on the relationship between art and neurosis.”)

Frieze is “The leading magazine on contemporary art and culture - published eight times a year.”

http://frieze.com/magazine/

frieze issue 209: out now Art in an age of crisis

02/01/2020

Dr. Horney might have been pleased to hear this about a fellow German.

« But, looking at the range of pitches used in the final complete symphony, Albrecht dismisses that theory: “I don’t think it holds. Otherwise, what do you do with the piccolo in the Ninth Symphony —up there on top — and the contrabasses down below? All the registers are there. He could hear them with his inner ear. He was amazing.”

Albrecht is now editing the “conversation book” accounts and translating them from German into English for the first time, a mammoth publishing project that will eventually comprise 12 volumes.

British company Boydell & Brewer will publish volume 3 of Beethoven’s Conversation Books in May (£45), following the publication of some of the new research in an article entitled “The Hearing Beethoven”, in The Beethoven Journal this month and (in German) by the Vienna Oboe Journal in March.

Covering the period from 1818 until the composer’s death, the books’ subjects range from music and politics to shopping lists and errands. Albrecht said that, although a scholarly German-language edition was begun in 1968, its format made it difficult to read and its contents had been misinterpreted. The English translation of this work has extensive footnotes on each page to help readers make sense of the evidence.

He added that these “compelling conversations” will finally allow English-speaking music lovers to hear what Beethoven and his friends were discussing.

Evidence proving that Beethoven could still hear “doesn’t take away from the fact that this man did what he did in the face of overwhelming difficulty”, he noted.

2020 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest composers of all time. The event will be marked by festivals and programmes across the world. »

Musicologist uncovers evidence that, contrary to established belief, the great composer retained some hearing in his final years

01/28/2020

Diversity enhances the learning environment for all.

Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation argues that it's time to take a closer look at integration.

12/10/2019

« When difficulties arise, we must start with ourselves, with the attitudes, expectations, and vulnerabilities we carry into a relationships. »

« Zorluklar ortaya çıktığında bir ilişkinin içine taşıdığımız tavırlar ile beklentiler ve zayıflıklarla başlamamız gerekmektedir. »

Outlining exactly what students need to know to get a good grade can get in the way of genuine learning.

12/05/2019

« Princess Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1945, where she was commissioned with the honorary rank of second subaltern and trained as an officer driver. »

Princess Elizabeth was the first female member of the Royal Family to join the Armed Services as a full-time active member.

12/02/2019

« When difficulties arise, we must start with ourselves, with the attitudes, expectations, and vulnerabilities we carry into a relationship. »

— Karen Horney, M.D., 1947

Indeed, as Dr. Horney said, we must start with the attitudes, expectations, and vulnerabilities we carry into our relationship with Earth.

He says the world has the scientific knowledge and the technical means to limit global warming, but ‘what is lacking is political will.’

11/28/2019

When in Roma, do as the Horneyans do!

SEMINARIO APERTO
13 DICEMBRE 2019
S.P.I.G.A. Roma

11/15/2019

I guess if we estimate 25 years per generation, then Dr. Karen Horney (“Horn-eye,” 1885–1952) could retrospectively be considered “Generation U.” After GenZ, will we switch to doubled letters (like in Excel) or from another alphabet, like Greek, or Arabic? #الجيل‌الألِفْ



Thanks to Sean Singh Chauhan for this share.

10/26/2019

“Karen Danielsen, holding skull, poses with fellow students with dueling swords (1906)”

10/23/2019

« If we are to be good guides for child development, to summarize, we must have as our goal the achievement of a spontaneous, free, mutually related person whose principal characteristic is that he moves with people. We must recognize the early signs of a hostile environment, as they appear in the child, by his moving away, toward, or against people. We must be willing to look into ourselves to see where we have erred, and to take the necessary steps to change. We must avoid the op**te, “he’ll grow out of it.”

Knowledge is the key to being good parents. I speak not only of intellectual knowledge — although this, too, is important — but also of self-knowledge. It is provident to prevent problems, but it is never too late to correct them. One can look into himself, and with one’s partner, into the marital relationship; one can read about child care and guidance; and, if the need exists, professional advice can be sought.

Guiding child development is not easy. It often is more demanding than any other human relationship, but nothing I could say would add to your recognition that the harmony of the home in which there are children depends on happy, healthy children, and that from these will come the health of the world. »

— Harold Kelman, “Guidance of Child Development,” 1949 WNYC radio 📻 broadcast. Audio courtesy of the New York City Municipal Archives: WNYC Collection.

https://www.facebook.com/Upworthy/videos/1643680139006171?sfns=mo

10/22/2019

« Capitano Samantha Cristoforetti « ha conseguito il record europeo e il record femminile di permanenza nello spazio in un singolo volo (199 giorni),[2] quest’ultimo superato nel settembre 2017 dalla statunitense Peggy Whitson[3]. »

https://www.space.com/amp/29161-astronaut-star-trek-uniform-space.html

European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti tweeted a photo of herself aboard the International Space Station, wearing a uniform from the "Star Trek: Voyager" TV series.

10/20/2019

I couldn’t agree with the extreme individualism and “Objectivism” that Rand espoused, but it’s clear that some of the principles that rand probably favored — not being too easily swayed by nice-sounding rhetoric, maintaining a certain amount of independence from internal sources (unruly emotions and feelings — as well as the possibility of deceptive external influences — are valid. They can also be carried too far. Much as with Horney’s trends of (OIC, 1945) (NHG, 1950).

As my dad fled from the Communists of North Korea during the Korean War, I’m wary of the façade put on by the likes of Kim Jŏng-ŭn and alarmed by those who sympathize with his totalitarian Communist dynasty. But I certainly like the socialism of Bernie Sanders (and so does my dad). And I’m glad to be reading Jennifer Burns’s biographical piece on Ayn Rand instead of having to slog through Rand myself.

— かしら

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/v0fegj/the-colbert-report-jennifer-burns

Historian Jennifer Burns shares her book, "Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right."