Abstract
MANY attempts have been made to modify the original Freudian technique and theories regarding the origin and treatment of neurosis. This book describes the variations which Dr. Horney has developed and gives an outline of her views on psychology, which are interesting and coherent. The first thing which strikes the reader is that the analyses she records are not transference analyses in the Freudian sense at all and, in fact, the word ‘transference' does not appear in the index. She does not believe, with Freud, that neuroses are caused by some distortion of the instinct but that they are the product of abnormal personality. She thinks that anxiety is produced by isolation, for example, and not by castration fears or birth trauma ; that obsessions are due to disturbed personal relationships and not to repressed sadistic impulses, and so on. Her views on personality are individual also. She believes that there are three types : (1) compliant, (2) aggressive, (3) detached. They are really devices to deal with the patient‘s basic anxiety. This anxiety is also avoided by idealization of the ego, so that the patient is able to see himself as more perfect than he really is. The neurotic conflicts, she thinks, often lead to diversion of energy from useful channels, so that there is an impoverishment and inertia, the final stages of which are an all-pervading feeling of hopelessness.
Our Inner Conflicts
A Constructive Theory of Neurosis. By Dr. Karen Horney. Pp. 250. (London : Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd., 1946.) 10s. 6d. net.
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ALLEN, C. Our Inner Conflicts. Nature 161, 830 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161830a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161830a0