The neurotic person is driven by the tyranny of the should, oscillating between a false perfection and self-hate.
Psychologists
Karen Horney
German-American psychoanalyst and psychiatrist (1885-1952). A founder of the neo-Freudian Cultural School with Sullivan and Fromm, she challenged Freud's instinct theory and the concept of 'penis envy,' tracing neurosis instead to culture, society and parent-child relations. The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937), Our Inner Conflicts (1945) and Neurosis and Human Growth (1950) systematised ten neurotic needs and three basic orientations—compliance, aggression, withdrawal—as well as her concepts of the 'tyranny of the shoulds' and 'search for glory.' After breaking with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute in 1941 she co-founded the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, pioneering feminine psychology and self-realisation theory that anticipated Maslow's humanistic psychology.
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Karen Horney's Other Quotes
The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization.
The simple fact is that men are jealous of women's capacity to give birth, and that this jealousy is far more powerful and significant than penis envy.
Self-realization is the healthy person's aim through life.
Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.
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