#unlike a certain game that keeps me trapped into choosing the same dude over and over again

[aestheticitii]

sometimes, i'm like, "eh, i don't like jakob that much" and then i reread his support chain

[theory-in-a-story-blog]

Reading through the lenses of Karen Horney

Karen Horney was the first women to present a paper on psychology at an international conference. She’s one of the most influential figures in the development of feminine psychology. There’s no personality textbook that does not talk about Karen Horney. So what shaped her personality? To answer that you need to have a brief context of her early life.

Karen Horney was born as Karen Danielson; she was the second child of her father’s second marriage. The first child was her older brother; she has observed that her father was always supportive of her brother’s endeavours more than her just because she was a girl. She saw this as an obstacle and decided to overcome it by being smart, as a compensation for her looks and gender. She’s one of the first women to enter a medical school in Germany. It is here, she learned about Psychoanalysis the buzz term of that time. She was guided and trained by Karl Abraham. She soon began to question Freud’s idea of Psychoanalysis. Certain concepts showed how andocentric the entire theory was. For example the concept of Penis envy; she believed that penis envy does not literally translate to envying the penis rather it is the envy that stems out of the importance the society and various cultures have associated with it.  She coined the term womb envy which explains a man’s need to succeed in everything and create a legacy for themselves stems from their inability to bear and conceive a child.

The affects of growing anti-Semitism and her differences with Freud persuaded her to move to U.S.A, where she expanded the horizons of feminine psychology and psychoanalysis. She has contributed extensively to the research in the respective fields. Her efforts were recognised by her colleagues and they have opened a clinic in her name to promote her efforts in the advancements of feminine psychology and a broader understanding of psychoanalytic approach.

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 Graduation day was tomorrow, three women sat in sparsely decorated room with cups of tea in their hands. Amara, Nira and Noor were reminiscing over the time spent in college, over the last two years when they had been completing their master’s degree.

These three women made a very peculiar trio. They were extremely different from each other and it was very unlikely that you would find such a group anywhere else. They were thought to be lucky to have been assigned the same room in the girls hostel of their college and had surprisingly taken a liking towards each other.

Noor was the most timid of them all; always feeling like she had to go an extra mile to keep her friends. She often felt homesick, but thanked her stars for finding friends like Nira and Amara, who made her, feel secure in the new city. She would time and again give up her space for Nira’s things as she had too much stuff. She felt slightly more insecure about Amara, but she kept those feelings to herself. Noor felt that Sociology had been a great choice for a master’s degree as she could get to help people. As a child she had been very attached to her mother and till date would do anything to make her mother happy.

Noor shows a Compliant personality. She strives for other’s affection and would do anything that may help her in achieving it, even if it caused her discomfort. She often tries to behave the way others want her to as evidenced by her relationship with Nira and her mother. She feels the need for attention to feel loved and secure in her own environment. She shows movement towards people and displays to neurotic needs- Affection and Approval, a dominant partner.

Whereas Noor was the dependent one, Nira was fiercely self-regulating. She had finished her master’s in Business Management and could not wait to start working and putting in her knowledge to use in the working world. She was convinced that she would climb the corporate ladder rapidly. While growing up she was an only child and one could say that she was used to getting her way. But Nira was not only known for her loud personality, but for her sharp mind and efficient working skills. She had won at several fests throughout college and was the perfect student by her professors. Once she found something she was good at, she did not stop until she achieved all there was to achieve in that field. She was extremely competitive and confident about her abilities.

Nira moves against people in order to alleviate basic anxiety. She has an Aggressive personality. She is driven to suppress others in order to come out on top. She often took on leadership roles for the feel f power in her hands. She got a thrill out of being praised and admired for her achievements and abilities.

  Amara was the combination of her roommates. She was quiet yet an independent person. At the start of the year, she used to feel extremely annoyed by her loud and talkative roommates but overtime learnt to live with them as she went and purchased noise cancelling earphones to listen to her music. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her roommates, she was thankful for them, but she felt that they did not understand the concept of ‘personal space’. She had done her masters in English Literature and felt that her work had quality and charm that the rest of her course mates failed to imbibe in their style of writing.  

Amara exhibits a Detached personality. She avoids forming intimate relationships, and enjoys her independence. She relied heavily on herself and felt that her achievements should be recognised and accepted as they were. She shows a movement away from people, and sees herself as a self-sufficient perfectionist and she refused to look beyond her comfort zone.

As their degree had come to an end, the inevitable topic of their future surfaced in their conversation. ‘What were we going to do now?’

“I really want to work and get to the top of my game and show the world what im really capable of”, Nira began.

“But what about marriage?” Noor questioned her.

“Huh, who needs men?” commented Amara.

Nira didn’t completely agree with Amara, she and her boyfriend had recently spoken about marriage and they would make a great functioning couple. “For me, personally, it’s on the table but definitely after a few years, I must get on my own two feet first”.

“Yeah even I would like to do that but my parents have already found a nice guy for me and when I spoke with him, he was extremely supportive of my working” Noor chimed in.

“Well girls, you have a fun time; I’ve nearly finished my book and I sure as hell don’t need a man to keep me happy in my life. I’m never going to get married, imagine sharing a bed every night, goodness! I need my space.” Amara really let them know what she felt.

Horney would analyse this scene with a lot of interest. Being an early feminist, she dismissed the orthodox psychoanalytical theories that supported men’s dominance over women. Even amongst these three women, we see a drive to establish and not be trapped in the patriarchal system. Some women choose motherhood and some, a career. But many manage to balance both simultaneously and successfully.

An awkward silence followed Amara’s comment. Uncharacteristically Amara spoke up, “Dude those boys in my class are so immature anyway. Imagine, even in 2017, I heard one of them whisper to the other about how the girls in class were too emotional to ever be able to write objectively.”

“Wow, you’ve got some misogynistic pigs in your class! They sound like they are jealous.” Nira said in shock.

Horney countered Freud’s concept of penis envy, where he said that women were jealous of men which caused to be inferior to men. She turned the tables on Freud. While agreeing that women did feel inferior to men, she classified that it was because of the cultural environment and the society they were raised in, where men were given more importance. There was no biological reasoning behind such feelings. To strengthen her argument, she went on to say that men were extremely envious of a woman’s ability to give birth to another human and called it ‘Womb Envy’.

Nira suddenly got on the bed and raised her cup of tea in the air, “Girls, I would like to toast to the both of you and also to this generation of women! We are stronger than we ever have been before and there is nothing that can between what we want to achieve in life and who we want to become. I really hope that we are able to become the women we deserve and have the ability to become. There will be obstacles, but we have the power in ourselves to overcome them!”

Most ‘normal’ people have so called ideal and perfect pictures of themselves, built on a flexible assessment of their abilities. But for neurotics, this self image is inflexible and unrealistic. They construct a ‘Tyranny of shoulds’ which is an attempt to realise this ideal self image, by going along with the ideals which they should embody. They often defend themselves by projecting these conflicts onto the outside world in a process called Externalisation.