Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization is the magnum opus of German-American psychoanalyst Karen Horney. In it she outlines her theory of neurosis.
In Horney's view, the key difference between neurosis and healthy growth is the difference between compulsive actions fueled by anxiety and spontaneous actions fueled by one's full range of emotions. If a person grows up able to maintain his or her spontaneity, that person grows up by a process which Horney calls self-realization. Horney describes self-realization as the development of a person's given potentialities, and compares it with the process of an acorn growing, given fertile soil, into a tree.
The principal subject of the book, however, is what happens when a person's spontaneity is crushed in early life. The person will slowly lose touch with that spontaneity or "real self" and develop, instead, a reactive self which is constructed to respond to dangers of various kinds (see True self and false self). If a child's early environment is such that the child grows up seeing the world as basically hostile, compulsive actions will predominate and the child will grow up devoted to allaying anxiety. This development and its consequences for the adult personality are what Horney calls neurosis.
Horney devotes thirteen chapters to an analysis of the neurotic development in all its nuances and the various forms it can take as a person grows into adulthood, one chapter to the process of overcoming neurosis in therapy, and one chapter to how her theory compares and contrasts with classical psychoanalytic theory.
and 23 Related for: Neurosis and Human Growth information
NeurosisandHumanGrowth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization is the magnum opus of German-American psychoanalyst Karen Horney. In it she outlines her...
final book, NeurosisandHumanGrowth, Karen Horney lays out a complete theory of the origin and dynamics of neurosis. In her theory, neurosis is a distorted...
book, NeurosisandHumanGrowth, based her idea of "true self" and "false self" through the view of self-improvement, interpreting it as real self and ideal...
ideas in her magnum opus NeurosisandHumanGrowth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization. 1950 – Erik Erikson published Childhood and Society, in which he...
that the increases in cancers were due to neurosis, and that women with radiation sickness, hair loss, and burned skin were suffering from "housewife...
existential neurosis, and alienation. The various aspects associated with existential crises are sometimes divided into emotional, cognitive, and behavioral...
mental functioning through interest and training, usually within a relatively normal range of development. Neurosisand other pathological states reveal...
based her work on that of Thomas Aquinas and "the relevance of Thomistic rational psychology to neurosisand its treatment." Her work is also based on...
study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humansand nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes...
Institutional Neurosis. Bristol: John Wright and Sons. Goffman, Erving (1961). Asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates...
(also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic...
Infantile Neurosisand Other Works (1917–1919) Vol. XVIII Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works (1920–1922) Vol. XIX The Ego and the...
Guattari states that temporal différance is secreted from obsessional neurosis. The hysteric's discourse is driven by the Real, where object (a) is at...
Personality Typology", Social Behavior and Personality, 19 (1) 11-20, 1991. Naranjo, Claudio (1994). Character andNeurosis. p. 20. Riso, Wisdom of the Enneagram...
Brunner-Routledge. ISBN 0-415-23633-9 Russon, John Edward (2003). Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life (pbk. ed.). State University...
receiving an inadequate balance of both motherly and fatherly love results in various forms of neurosis in adults. Fromm opens this section by stating that...
psychological paralysis, neurosis, and psychic pain. Further irrational human behaviour can occur as a result of habit, laziness, mimicry and simple obedience...
excessively out of balance in relation to it, as in neurosis, a state that can result in depression, anxiety, and personality disorders or so flooded by it that...
in Vienna, along with Marie Frischauf. He said he wanted to "attack the neurosis by its prevention rather than treatment". He moved to New York in 1939...