It is interesting how someone who has a \"neurotic need for affection\" ends up

Question

It is interesting how someone who has a "neurotic need for affection" ends up moving away from people, like you mentioned for Bojack Horseman. Yet, it makes sense that this would result in aggressive and controlling behavior, as Horney points out (Feist, Feist, & Roberts, 2012). Sometimes when we are desperate for something, it can cause the opposite to happen, or behaviors that would prohibit the thing we desire.

One other interesting thing that Karen Horney pointed out is that people with this need "try to live up to the expectations of others, they tend to dread self-assertion, and are quite uncomfortable with the hostility of others as well as the hostile feelings within themselves (Feist, Feist, & Roberts, 2012, p.173)."

Explanation / Answer

Horney's theory was built on the assumption that social and cultural conditions, especially childhood experiences are largely responsible for shaping personality. People who do not have their needs for love and affection satisfied during childhood develop a basic hostility toward their parents and suffer from basic anxiety. Horney theorized that people combat basic anxiety by adopting one of three fundamental styles of relating to others. Horney's writings are concerned mostly with the neurotic personality, many of her ideas can also be applied to normal individuals though. Horney's view on personality is a reflection of her life experiences. 1. Moving toward people 2. Moving against people 3. Moving away from people. Normal individuals may use any of these modes of relating to other people, but neurotics are compelled to rigidly rely on only one. Neurotics compulsive behaviour generates a basic intra-psychic conflict that may take the form of either an idealized self-image or self-hatred. Horney believed that people begin life with the potential for healthy development but need favourable conditions for growth: a warm and loving environment that is not overly permissive as children need discipline too. Such conditions provide feelings of safety and satisfaction and permit them to grow in accordance with their real self. A multitude of adverse conditions can interfere. 1. parents inability or unwillingness to love their child: because of own neurotic needs, parents often dominate, neglect, overprotect, reject or overindulge. If parents do not satisfy children's needs for safety and satisfaction, child develops feelings of basic hostility toward the parents. This hostility is rarely expressed overtly, but instead, repressed with no conscious awareness of it. These repressed feelings of hostility leads to profound feelings of insecurity known as Basic Anxiety. Basic hostility and basic anxiety are inextricably interwoven. Hostile impulses are the principle source of basic anxiety but basic anxiety can also contribute to feelings of hostility. Children who feel threatened by their parents develop a reactive hostility in defence of that threat. This reactive hostility may in turn, create additional anxiety. It does not matter whether anxiety or hostility is the primary factor. The important point is that their reciprocal influence may intensify a neurosis without a person experiencing any additional outside conflict. Basic anxiety itself is not a neurosis but it is the nutritive soil for neuroses. Basic anxiety is constant and relenting and needs to particular stimulus. It permeates all relationships with others and leads to unhealthy ways of trying to cope with people. Neurotic individuals have the same problems that affect normal people except they experience them to a greater degree. Normal individuals are able to use a variety of defensive maneuvers against rejection, hostility and anxiety, neurotics compulsively repeat the same strategy in an essentially unproductive manner. Horney insists that neurotics do not enjoy misery and suffering, they cannot change their behaviour by free will and they must continually protect themselves against basic anxiety. So their defensive strategy traps them in a vicious circle in which compulsive need to reduce basic anxiety leads to behaviours that perpetuate low self-esteem, generalized hostility, inappropriate striving for power, inflated feelings of superiority, persistent apprehension, all which lead to more basic anxiety. Neurotics, in their quest for affection and approval, attempt indiscriminately to please others. They try to live up to the expectations of others, tend to dread self-assertion, and are quite uncomfortable with hostility of others as well as the hostile feelings within themselves.

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