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Neurosis and Human Growth The Struggle Towards SelfRealization Karen Horney Books

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Neurosis and Human Growth The Struggle Towards SelfRealization Karen Horney Books

A must read for any serious psychology student!

This is a book that lays out Karen Horney's theory of neurosis. It is not a self-help book per se, but if you want to understand your inner subconscious processes - this is the best theory out there (in my opinion). It is complementary to ideas that you will find in CBT and Recovery literature.

I challenge anyone out there to read a self-help book out there today that does not take at least one idea from this book.

I have a Master's degree in psychology and have primarily trained in and use cognitive therapy. However, if you study cognitive therapy, Karen Horney will barely be a footnote. This is absolutely baffling to me after reading Neurosis and Human Growth. Horney makes reference to nearly every cognitive therapy concept out there including the role of attitudes and distorted thinking. When I have heard others reference her, they make reference to what she seems to be most famous for - "The Tyranny of the Should". Of course, Cognitive theorists have stolen this idea and have taken her words and twisted them into the term "cognitive distortion" ... or thinking error. This "thinking error" is called "shoulds" or "should statements." Albert Ellis called it "Must-erbation."

Of course, the therapeutic methods used by Ellis and Beck are different than Horney's approach - which primarily used free association and dream interpretation to "uncover" subconscious thoughts and attitudes. Cognitive therapy has the same general aims but instead refers to the subconscious processes as "automatic thoughts." So, I'm not saying that Beck and Ellis made no original contributions. But, Horney's ideas supply the basic foundation.

It's a bit frustrating for me that she gets very little credit to her immense contribution to the field of psychology - and she came by it by her own suffering and self-work. To me, it's as if Beck and Ellis stole her ideas, came up with some new therapeutic interventions and passed it all off as their own. Why else has Horney received so little attention?

That brings me to another of Horney's contributions - "Self-Analysis" - Cognitive therapy self-help books proliferate stores today. She was the first psychiatrist to discuss this topic in her book "Self Analysis" (as far as I know).

Even newer "Third Wave" CBT approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment therapy emphasize what is called "pragmatic truth criterion" - which Horney proposes in this book when she writes: "The criterion for what we cultivate or reject in ourselves lies in the question: Is a particular attitude or drive inductive or obstructive to my human growth?"

There are many other examples I could point out. I hope that Horney will get the proper recognition that she deserves at some point in the future.


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Neurosis and Human Growth The Struggle Towards SelfRealization Karen Horney Books Reviews

she died in the early 50's and it took until the late 80's for her ideas to take form with the addiction therapists like Bradshaw, et al
i have no idea how Bill Wilson read this book and came up with the article he wrote in the January, 1958 issue of the AA "Grapevine", "The New Frontier-- Emotional Sobriety that was based on instincts
it is one of my most worthwhile reads regarding trauma
Obsessive-compulsive? This book's got you covered. Codependent? This book's got you covered. Narcissistic? This book's got you covered. Histrionic? You see where this is going.

But it's not a collection like the DSM. It's a unified theory. This book was the culmination of Horney's life work, after treating all different kinds of patients in her practice and noticing the common threads.

There is no way to do these ideas justice in a review. I'll go ahead and try, but I insist that this is one you really have to read.

The basic idea is that we go astray when we start imagining that we're something we're not instead of seeing ourselves as we are. We do this in order to cope with the loneliness of feeling excluded as a young child, which itself is a product of not being able to connect with people because we're too afraid of people, which itself is a product of overwhelming negative experiences involving people in early childhood. But once we develop this fantasy image of ourselves, that's when life takes a dramatically wrong turn. Our attention, which for a normal kid would go into people and things resulting in a healthy and rich personality, gets poured into this image. The more we invest in it the more important it becomes to us and the more attention we give it.

Since the image, which could be anything from being uniquely beautiful, uniquely intelligent, uniquely good, or uniquely significant in any other way, is basically unreal, it is constantly brushing against hard reality. So, for example, a smart boy who goes down this course will probably develop an image involving intelligence. He probably has a lot of gifts, which in more favorable circumstances he would have found constructive ways to use. Instead, he builds his initial successes into a massive pride system in which he considers himself a rare genius. He might perhaps entertain fantasies that he has a unique sort of brain. Because he does this in lieu of putting forth effort in the world of reality, his achievements begin to lag behind. Since reality has a way of making itself noticed, he must retreat even further into fantasy in order to keep his bubble intact. By the time he reaches adulthood, this very intelligent young man will have achieved significantly less in tangible reality than his peers of similar intelligence, and so to keep his bubble intact must constantly invent new reasons he is the way he is (perhaps he is a unique, misunderstood visionary for whom ordinary achievements don't mean much).

But all this reinforcement doesn't make the system any stronger. It in fact just gives it more weak points, more ways reality can show him what he really is and really has achieved. And such weak points mean anxiety. So, early on as a kid, defense mechanisms begin to kick in. He moves toward people, submitting himself to somebody he decides is great or powerful. Or he moves against people, declaring himself a warrior and professing a law of the jungle. Or he moves away from people into aloofness. These defense mechanisms in turn become part of the system, part of the idealized image, and thus become invested with pride. Thus the self-effacing one fancies himself a saint or a great lover. The expansive one fancies himself a knight in shining armor. The aloof one fancies himself a sage on a mountaintop.

And so the construction of this monstrosity continues. Naturally all the unreality involved has consequences. Depending on the specific structure of the individual's system, these consequences manifest in different ways, ways which strikingly correspond to many modern psychiatric diagnoses. A self-effacing person is more likely to be a codependent. An expansive person is more likely to be a narcissist or an antisocial. A resigned person is more likely to be a schizoid.

The person has to work very hard to keep up his image and avoid exposing all the weak points to himself and to others. So he develops an overactive pseudo-conscience which imposes a tyranny on him and beats him down whenever he becomes too aware of the discrepancy between his fantasy image and the reality of himself.

Further, all the anxieties and defeats which of course must happen in the course of life and especially in this kind of life, must be dealt with too. This can result, for example, in destructively hedonistic behavior such as substance abuse problems.

Finally, Horney's message is one of hope. The form of therapy she describes has the aim of untangling all these knots the patient has built up over time, until he reaches his true needs that were buried for so long and develops some genuine strength. Anybody can go down this road; the only requirement is that they want to. So Horney even regards those we would consider narcissists and sociopaths to be fundamentally reachable and reformable, if only they decide they don't want to be that anymore.

This book is out of this world. There is no way I did her theory justice in this review. Horney's experience and compassion show in her writing, and her arguments are cogent and concise. You have to read this book.

I still don't understand why this woman does not have the place in history she deserves. Why did we retreat from learning about people's real issues into band-aiding all the symptoms with medications? Why do we have a million different diagnoses and pretend that they're all totally separate, without recognizing what so many of these mental illnesses have in common at their roots?

Did she hit too close to home for too many people? Can Horney's lack of recognition really be that simple? If so, that suggests that the cure for the ills of our world really rests in our attitude toward the truth.

[The actual date of this review is April 27, 2012. I had reviewed this book a couple years prior and then deleted the review, but keeps the old date.]
This book has taken me down a path to deep healing, It has helped me to better understand my neurotic pride system and give my true self a chance to grow and flourish. A must read for people serious about real healing and growing ones unique self.
I don't think I've read a more detailed and comprehensive book on neurosis. Neurosis was basically considered an exaggerated version of otherwise healthy behavior/thinking. I say "was" because I believe the term neurosis may not be used anymore in the same way by the psychiatric community. Karen Horney does an excellent job of describing and connecting the many many components of this disorder.

There are no real solutions to speak of in the book. It doesn't appear to be a traditional self-help book. It reads more as reference.

If you're looking to use it for self-help, I'd recommend reading it in conjunction with "The Pathwork Lectures". They are their own unique body of work and are more solution-oriented.
A must read for any serious psychology student!

This is a book that lays out Karen Horney's theory of neurosis. It is not a self-help book per se, but if you want to understand your inner subconscious processes - this is the best theory out there (in my opinion). It is complementary to ideas that you will find in CBT and Recovery literature.

I challenge anyone out there to read a self-help book out there today that does not take at least one idea from this book.

I have a Master's degree in psychology and have primarily trained in and use cognitive therapy. However, if you study cognitive therapy, Karen Horney will barely be a footnote. This is absolutely baffling to me after reading Neurosis and Human Growth. Horney makes reference to nearly every cognitive therapy concept out there including the role of attitudes and distorted thinking. When I have heard others reference her, they make reference to what she seems to be most famous for - "The Tyranny of the Should". Of course, Cognitive theorists have stolen this idea and have taken her words and twisted them into the term "cognitive distortion" ... or thinking error. This "thinking error" is called "shoulds" or "should statements." Albert Ellis called it "Must-erbation."

Of course, the therapeutic methods used by Ellis and Beck are different than Horney's approach - which primarily used free association and dream interpretation to "uncover" subconscious thoughts and attitudes. Cognitive therapy has the same general aims but instead refers to the subconscious processes as "automatic thoughts." So, I'm not saying that Beck and Ellis made no original contributions. But, Horney's ideas supply the basic foundation.

It's a bit frustrating for me that she gets very little credit to her immense contribution to the field of psychology - and she came by it by her own suffering and self-work. To me, it's as if Beck and Ellis stole her ideas, came up with some new therapeutic interventions and passed it all off as their own. Why else has Horney received so little attention?

That brings me to another of Horney's contributions - "Self-Analysis" - Cognitive therapy self-help books proliferate stores today. She was the first psychiatrist to discuss this topic in her book "Self Analysis" (as far as I know).

Even newer "Third Wave" CBT approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment therapy emphasize what is called "pragmatic truth criterion" - which Horney proposes in this book when she writes "The criterion for what we cultivate or reject in ourselves lies in the question Is a particular attitude or drive inductive or obstructive to my human growth?"

There are many other examples I could point out. I hope that Horney will get the proper recognition that she deserves at some point in the future.