Horney's Influence On Personality

In opposition to Freud’s theory that biology was the main factor in gender roles, Horney believed that both biology and cultural, impact one’s personality. However, Horney pushes biology toward the back burner and mainly focuses on culture and societal pressures. In his studies, Freud developed the view of penis envy, that due to biology, women felt inferior to men. However, Horney was determined to show that, “females have intrinsic biological constitutions,” which are not a sole, “product of [females] differences from males,” (Paris 2000). It was a motivation in itself for Horney to not allow a male dominant study overlook the important factor that not only play into female behaviorism, but how everyone is developed through more than just …show more content…
Unlike Freud, Horney did not, “Consider it feasible to localize neurotic conflicts in a schematic way,” or in other words it was not okay to restrict illness in a simplified way (Horney 1945). Throughout her studies, Horney believed that relating was not dependent on the psychic structure, but rather on defenses. Her view on psychoanalytic behavior comes from a humanistic view on development, and takes interest on developing the idea of the real self. A marker of mental health, according to Horney, is the ability to have a strong balance between ones idealized self and their real self. The idealized self is one’s idea who they think they are, whereas their real self is who they are in reality. Or in other words, the real self is, “a source of intrinsically satisfying activity that requires nothing else,” (Horney …show more content…
By having a healthy balance of who I actually am and who it is that I think that I am, I am also able to have a more realistic picture of life. At a younger age I may have not had the same perspective, I may have thought that I was more a like my sister in aims to be “cool” like she was. By believing that I was like my sister, I did not understand who I truly was in reality. Today, I would be sure not to confuse this notion with the idea of who I want to be, but reflect on it being who I thought I was. I recognize that today I am aspiring to be like Christ, and that I desire to adapt specific qualities like His. However, it would be unhealthy for me to accept it as truth to think that I am exactly like Christ. It is also important to understand that my motivation for wanting to be live Christ comes from my need for relation, as well as my motivation for safety. Whether, that’s a desire for a relationship with God, or the church as a whole, or for safety from eternal separation from God, it could look like a spectrum of different