Karen Horney V. Alfred Adler

1594 words 7 pages
Karen Horney and Alfred Adler are two very similar yet different neo-analytic theorists. At first glance, it may appear that Horney stole some of Adler's best ideas. It is, of course, quite conceivable that she was influenced by Adler. It is clear, for example, that Horney’s three neurotic solutions are very close to Adler's personality typology. Horney proposed a series of strategies used by neurotics to cope with other people and Adler developed a scheme of so called personality types that he intended to illustrate patterns that could denote a characteristic governed under the overall style of life.
Horney’s “Moving Toward” suggests that people are always attempting to make others happy, gain love and to secure that approval and
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They are what he called "overburdened," and if someone doesn't come along to draw their attention to others, they will remain focused on themselves. Most will go through life with a strong sense of inferiority; a few will overcompensate with a superiority complex. Only with the encouragement of loved ones, will some truly compensate.
The second is pampering. Many children are taught, by the actions of others, that they can take without giving. Their wishes are everyone else's commands. This may sound like a wonderful situation, until you realize that the pampered child fails in two ways. First, he does not learn to do for himself, and discovers later that he is truly inferior and secondly, he does not learn any other way to deal with others than the giving of commands.
The third is neglect. A child who is neglected or abused learns what the pampered child learns, but learns it in a far more direct manner. They learn inferiority because they are told and shown every day that they are of no value, they learn selfishness because they are taught to trust no one. If you haven't known love, you don't develop a capacity for it later. The neglected child includes not only orphans and the victims of abuse, but also the children whose parents are never there, and the ones who were raised in a rigid, authoritarian manner.
Karen Horney and Alfred Adler have opposing views on the goals of psychoanalysis. What I mean by this is that Adler disagreed with Karen

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