Cultural Psychoanalysis: Karen Horney Pt. 11

Written by Richard Bukowski

Neurosis and Human Growth

Towards the end of Karen’s career, she mapped out the super-ego/ideal-self and demonstrated how pathological and inhuman it was. And when a super-ego takes hold of a culture, those inhuman standards are exacted against oneself and policed throughout the public. It can eventually become a normalized way of being, so that behaving toxic is considered normal. “The neurotic sets to work to mold himself into a supreme being of his own making. He holds before his soul his image of perfection and unconsciously tells himself: ‘Forget about the disgraceful creature you actually are; this is how you should be; and to be this idealized self is all that matters. You should be able to endure everything, to understand everything, to like everybody, to be always productive’ to mention only a few of these inner dictates. Since they are [unrelenting], I call them ‘the tyranny of the should.’ The inner dictates comprise all that the neurotic should be able to do, to be, to feel, to know and taboos on how and what he should not be.”

The Ego and the Id – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gvdo1-the-ego-and-the-id-sigmund-freud.html

Parents and authority figures make these demands of what we should do that are very familiar. These demands contradict each other and guarantee both external and internal conflict. “He should be the utmost of honesty, generosity, considerateness, justice, dignity, courage, unselfishness. He should be the perfect lover, husband, teacher. He should be-able to endure everything, should like everybody, should love his parents, his wife, his country; or, he should not be attached to anything or anybody, nothing should matter to him, he should never feel hurt, and he should always be serene and unruffled. He should always enjoy life; or, he should be above pleasure and enjoyment. He should be spontaneous; he should always control his feelings. He should know, understand, and foresee everything. He should be able to solve every problem of his own, or of others, in no time. He should be able to overcome every difficulty of his as soon as he sees it. He should never be tired or fall ill. He should always be able to find a job. He should be able to do things in one hour which can only be done in two to three hours.”

Like with parenting, or even any instructions given by an authority figure, there’s a variance between what one expects and what happens in reality. Without an attitude of dispelling illusions, one can go into toxic resistance against reality and ruminate on an ideal self that one uses to bash on a rock, the true self, for fear of rejection from authority figures. There needs to be a flexibility when challenges are too difficult so that one can backtrack to a safe distance. “But to speak of too high demands on self does not reveal the peculiar characteristics of inner dictates. These come into clear relief under closer examination. They are overlapping, because they all result from the necessity a person feels to turn into his idealized self, and from his conviction that he can do so…What strikes us first is the same disregard for feasibility which pervades the entire drive for actualization…Other demands on self may not be fantastic in themselves yet show a complete disregard for the conditions under which they could be fulfilled.”

Naturally workers and spouses can be pushed toward exhaustion where rest comes only when there’s injury, illness, and or, in mental collapse. All kinds of work can wear down a human into dust because demands are easy to make, but carrying them out is much harder. This then can send a signal to workers to instead aim at being the ones who make the demands and have others carry them out and take all the physical and emotional wear and tear while holding higher salaries and the ability to save and acquire capital faster than labourers with low wages. Their labour instead is mostly of emotional kinds when they have to deal with white collar politics. “The inner dictates, exactly like political tyranny in a police state, operate with a supreme disregard for the person’s own psychic condition—for what he can feel or do as he is at present.”

Being motivated by a means-to-an-end drive crushes the creative self to the point where people can’t even recognize the true self anymore. Even those who are creative can tell there’s a limit on their energy. There’s a desire to stop and rest, but the elimination of the private life can be a possibility when work takes over their time in total. Things like potential and actualization can be lost. Before a work starts, there needs to be a question “what is possible?” and then a “let’s see and find out” attitude, connected with learning about reality. A sense of growth can seem like a foreign experience or only something that is developed in hobbies, if one is fortunate enough to have the time for such things. “…The creative urge itself and the creative power can stem only from his desire for self-realization and the energies in its service. To the extent to which these energies are shifted from the simple and direct experiencing of life to having to prove something—that he is something he is not—his creative abilities are bound to be impaired…He must overcome all those needs, drives, or attitudes which obstruct his growth: only when he begins to relinquish his illusions about himself and his illusory goals has he a chance to find his real potentialities and to develop them. Only to the extent to which he gives up his false pride can he become less hostile to himself and evolve a solid self-confidence. Only as his shoulds lose their coercive power can he discover his real feelings, wishes, beliefs, and ideals. Only when he faces his existing conflicts has he the chance for a real integration—and so forth.”

Once this is all internalized, the therapist has their work cut out for them to peel back these ideal-self defense mechanisms. “All these stringent needs of the patient to protect his subjective values and to ward off dangers—or the subjective feeling of anxiety and terror—account for the impairment of his ability to co-operate with an analyst despite good conscious intentions. They account for the necessity of his being on the defensive.”

As Karen expanded her research into older philosophies and religions she could see the same warnings being made and the same mistakes repeating going back forever. “The road of analytic therapy is an old one, advocated time and again throughout human history. In the terms of Socrates and the Hindu philosophy, among others, it is the road to reorientation through self-knowledge. What is new and specific about it is the method of gaining self-knowledge, which we owe to the genius of Freud. The analyst helps the patient to become aware of all the forces operating in him, the obstructive and the constructive ones; he helps him to combat the former and to mobilize the latter.”

The reason why this is so much work is that shoulds can permeate every aspect of life where it’s possible to make a premature expectation. Like a theory, it’s necessary to start from somewhere, but where science and the super-ego depart is where science wants to discover the truth whereas pride wants to force the theory onto reality and make reality obey. “All information about possible psychic involvements gives everyone a chance to find out about his own troubles. When similarly we ask here what must the patient become aware of in order to uproot his pride system and all its entails we can simply say that he must become aware of his search for glory, his claims, his shoulds, his pride, his self-hate, his alienation from self, his conflicts, his particular solution and the effect of all these factors have on his human relations and his capacity for creative work…Moreover the patient must not become aware only of these individual factors but also of their connections and interactions. Most relevant on this score is his recognizing that self-hate is pride’s inseparable companion and that he cannot have one without the other. Every single factor must be seen in the context of the whole structure. He must realize for instance that his shoulds are determined by his kinds of pride, that their non-fulfillment elicits his self-accusations, and that these in turn account for the need to protect himself from their onslaughts.”

These character defenses have an incentive in continuing, and until patients notice the consequences in a deep and multifaceted way, the mind can easily return to a comfort zone of character disorder, especially if culture rewards it. The self-sabotage has to be palpable and one has to be able to face the enemy within. “…Only when experiencing the full impact in its irrationality of a hitherto unconscious or semiconscious feeling or drive do we gradually come to know the intensity and the compulsiveness of unconscious forces operating within ourselves. It is not enough for a patient to admit the probability that his despair over unrequited love is in reality a feeling of being humiliated because his pride in irresistibility, or in possessing the partner body and soul, is hurt. He must feel the humiliation and, later on, the hold which his pride has on him. It is not enough to know vaguely that his anger or self-reproach is probably greater than warranted by the occasion. He must feel the full impact of his rage or the very depths of his self-condemnation: only then does the force of some unconscious process (and its irrationality) stare him in the face. Only then may he have an incentive to find out more and more about himself.”

Seeing those connections, like that of an irrational pride fueling an irrational self-hate, allow the therapy to go into more depth. The irrational pride also was imitated from parenting and culture, so the sense of identity and ownership can be relaxed. One realizes that one overrates or underrates in situations where a clear understanding of reality would be more skillful. Also when others are over or underrated, social exchanges can alternate between exploitative and self-effacing because of the self-preoccupation. The boundaries of others can be neglected. “…Other kinds of fear kept occurring as long as she did not feel the depth of her self-contempt. And the experience of self-contempt in turn helped only when she felt it in the context of her irrational demands on herself for mastering every difficulty.” There’s a realization that the demands made by a culture can veer into the hostile and exploitative. They are not demanding out of love of country or a sense of doing an honest day’s work. “Nobody can acquire knowledge of his pride system and his solutions without some reorientation going on within him. He begins to realize that certain ideas he has had about himself were fantastic. He begins to doubt whether his demands upon himself are not perhaps impossible of attainment for any human being, whether his claims on others, besides resting on shaky foundations, are not simply unrealizable…He begins to see that he was inordinately proud of certain attributes which he does not possess—or at least not to the extent he believed—that for instance his independence, of which he was so proud, is rather a sensitivity to coercion than a real inner freedom; that in fact he is not so immaculately honest as he saw himself because he is shot through with unconscious pretenses; that with all his pride in mastery he is not even master in his own house; that a good deal of his love for people (which made him so wonderful) results from a compulsive need to be liked or admired.”

Values have a way of conflicting because different situations require different responses. People grow into their values as they are tested, to see if they actually work and are appropriate in certain situations. Sometimes values go against the current of culture and they have to be tested against the culture to assess if they are unrealistic or not. There are situations where someone is avant-garde and truly ahead of their time, which is not an easy position to be in. “Perhaps mastery or love is not the ultimate answer to everything? All such changes can be described as a gradual work of reality-testing and value-testing. Through these steps the pride system is increasingly undermined. They are all necessary conditions for the reorientation which is the aim of therapy. But so far they are all disillusioning processes. And they alone could not and would not have a thorough and lasting liberating effect (if any) if constructive moves did not set in simultaneously.” There needs to be “…something obstructive to be relinquished in order to give something constructive the possibility to grow.”

Growth again is the aliveness that Karen was pursuing and the true self can be defined more clearly as that which allows one to grow constructive skills. It’s not impulsive hedonism. It’s not a tyranny of shoulds. It’s like having an inner advocate and being around friends that are more inclined to want the best for you than to be enablers or saboteurs. “He must also know when and how to enlist the patient’s conscious participation in this process. But more important than any of these factors is that of the analyst himself being a constructive person and having a clear vision of his ultimate goal as that of helping the patient to find himself.”

Sometimes only in dreams can the constructive self be apparent to a patient. If a character disorder is pervasive, the true self can appear dangerous and alien. The layers of defenses are peeled back when emotional content is discovered that expresses what was never expressed in waking life. “In dreams we are closer to the reality of ourselves; that they represent attempts to solve our conflicts, either in a neurotic or in a healthy way; that in them constructive forces can be at work, even at a time when they are hardly visible otherwise…From dreams with constructive elements the patient can catch a glimpse, even in the initial phase of analysis, of a world operating within him which is peculiarly his own and which is more true to his feelings than the world of his illusions. There are dreams in which the patient expresses in symbolic form the sympathy he feels for himself because of what he is doing to himself. There are dreams which reveal a deep well of sadness, of nostalgia, of longing; dreams in which he is struggling to come alive; dreams in which he realizes that he is imprisoned and wants to get out; dreams in which he tenderly cultivates a growing plant or in which he discovers a room in his house of which he did not know before. The analyst will of course help him to understand the meaning of what is expressed in symbolic language. But in addition he may emphasize the significance of the patient’s expressing in his dreams feelings or longings which he does not dare to feel in waking life. And he may raise the question of whether, for instance, the feeling of sadness is not more truly what the patient does feel about himself than the optimism he displays consciously…In time other approaches are possible. The patient himself may start to wonder about how little he knows about his feelings, his wishes, or his beliefs. The analyst will then encourage such puzzled feelings.”

Again, the fear of missing out shows it’s true power to convince, even if it’s based on illusions, and only when the fear of missing out is based on something real and concrete can then the patient plant his feet squarely on the ground of reality. “…It is, to be more specific, important that the patient become aware of his remoteness from himself instead of being oblivious to it. The effect is to be compared with the moment when a youngster who has grown up under a dictatorship learns of a democratic way of living. The message may penetrate immediately or it may be received with skepticism because democracies have been discredited. Nevertheless it may gradually dawn on him that he is missing out on something desirable.”

The real self then becomes something inside oneself as a potential but then interconnects with culture when real preferences and real skills coincide in the marketplace. Skills are tested and honed by experience, not by fantasizing. There also needs to be enough self-acceptance in the patient to tolerate the trial and error necessary to grow. “By focusing on the real self, the analyst can point out that a conflict may either be frightening because of its magnitude or because there is as yet too little of the patient’s real self operating for him to cope with even a minor conflict.”

That testing requires actions to prove to him or herself what they can do in reality and to see that it is possible to surprise oneself as illusions are dispelled one by one. People learn that their sense of self is not static but developing, and there will always be some lack of information available that generates illusions ever anew. A secure self doesn’t blame itself for not being omniscient. “From the standpoint of the real self, on the other hand, he would suggest that the patient cannot commit himself because he is too remote from himself to know his preferences and his directions…The less he knows his own feelings and beliefs the more easily will he be swayed back and forth, and he may go to pieces in the process. And, vice versa, the more firmly he is rooted in himself the less wear and tear will he suffer from such opposite pulls.”

Inner shoulds by definition are prone to illusion, but as those false premises are accepted, choices become more ambivalent than they would otherwise. He needs real desires and skills to bridge the gap between himself and others who have needs and expectations as well. Relationships have to have sustainable goals that both can contribute to. Contradictory goals related to energy, effort, and skill make goals ambivalent and inner conflict is generated. “The progress here is from attributing his contradictory feelings to the external situation (eg. the character of the mother), to realizing his own conflict in the particular relationship, finally to recognizing a major conflict within himself which, because it is within him, operates in all spheres of his life.”

The negative in the mind can be a source of something positive by seeing in a moment of clarity how unrealistic it is. The true self can’t be seen to be true unless it conforms to reality with some kind of test. What seems to be the block is an attitude about certain emotions that feel like they should not exist due to how they fail to conform to an ideal self-perception. Controlling people as an ideal must ridicule love relationships for fear of weakness. Being an ideal servant must attack notions of self-assertion as being a form of selfishness. Looking for an experience of ideal freedom often means disconnecting oneself from all friendships. In all these scenarios together, “The Tyranny of the Should,” victimizes love, self-respect, and friendship, for admiration, debasement, and isolation. A person who integrates love, self-respect, and friendship will begin living a more full life and appear less robotic to others. “…Unfamiliar or little-developed aspects of the personality have been uncovered and given an opportunity to develop. To be sure, what emerge first are still more neurotic drives. But this is useful, for the self-effacing person must first see his self-seeking egocentricity before he has a chance for healthy assertiveness; he must first experience his neurotic pride before he can approximate a real self-respect. Conversely the expansive type must first experience his abjectness and his need for people before he can develop genuine humility and tender feelings…With all this work well under way, the patient now can tackle more directly the most comprehensive conflict of all that between his pride system and his real self, between his drive to perfect his idealized self and his desire to develop his given potentials as a human being.”

By assessing one’s own energy, patients can advocate for themselves and begin to truly pursue their self-interest in a realistic way. It’s a view towards growth that continues for a normal lifespan and that changes in different stages of life. Self-real vs. Self-ideal. When one posits an ideal with a goal that should achieve this ideal, the energy is already being strained too far. Energy is now drained by resistance. If a goal is aimed at discovering what is possible, the good or improved are not made into enemies by the perfect. Less resistance means energy conservation. Most real inventions are built up of small improvements: growth. This is where magical thinking can be relinquished, when people realize they are hurting themselves, or draining themselves. Like in Buddhism, that awareness of dissatisfaction is an awareness of excessive effort. “Actually these are in all instances constructive signs of the patient’s grappling with the decision between self-idealization and self-realization. And perhaps nothing else shows so clearly that these two drives are incompatible as the inner struggle going on during the repercussions and the spirit of the constructive moves precipitating them. They do not occur because he sees himself more realistically but because he is willing to accept himself with limitations; not because he can make a decision and do something in his own behalf but because he is willing to heed his real interests and assume responsibility for himself; not because he can assert himself in a matter-of-fact way but because he is willing to assume his place in the world. To put it briefly: they are growing pains.”

With confusion and periods of backsliding, the therapist can be a compass to point to the areas where growth is happening so that the patient can make their own decisions to choose an underrated growth over the familiar character patterns. An objectivity towards oneself can develop. “It is more relevant than at any other time for the analyst to be an unambiguous ally of the endangered self. If his vision and his stand are clear, then he can give patients the support they so badly need in these trying times. The support consists mostly not of general assurances but of conveying to the patient the fact that he is engaged in a final battle and in showing him the odds against which, and the aims for which, he is fighting.”

The consequences of the old ways then appear less like the normal operating procedure for the patient, and now a “stick” of consequences, and the “carrot” of growth can move the patient in the right direction, even if it feels like alien territory. Sooner or later, the growth to a new level becomes normalized. “Each time the meaning of a repercussion is understood by the patient he comes out of it stronger than before. The repercussions gradually become shorter and less intense. Conversely the good periods become more definitely constructive. The prospect of his changing and growing becomes a tangible possibility, within his reach.”

As a scientific approach takes over, a “let’s see what happens” attitude, compared to a concrete block of shoulds, there’s a shift from daydreaming about ideals to becoming motivated to actualize realistic goals. There’s less demand on others to be perfect and there’s a push back on others who are also stuck parroting inhuman demands. For example, when a business owner or manager sees imperfection in their workers, they move towards process thinking of how to improve systems and communication to nudge the enterprise in the right direction. They don’t resort to shoulds, resistance, rage, and excessive pride as the default reaction, which is draining as described above. “But whatever work is still to be done—and there will always be plenty—the time has come close at hand when the patient can try to do it on his own. Just as vicious circles were at work to entangle him more and more deeply in his neurosis, now there are circles working in the reverse direction. If for instance the patient lessens his standards of absolute perfection, his self-accusations also decrease. Hence he can afford to be more truthful about himself. He can examine himself without becoming frightened. This in turn renders him less dependent upon the analyst and gives him confidence in his own resources. At the same time his need to externalize his self-accusations decreases too. So he feels less threatened by others, or less hostile toward them, and can begin to have friendly feelings for them.”

There are always lurking in the background desires for an escape from reality, but as the futility of those illusions become internalized, because they usually fail to be constructive, a taste can be developed for the possible and the real. There’s more flavour in reality, and magical thinking begins to appear as bland as it is abstract to the point of being ridiculous. “The patient’s courage and confidence in his ability to take charge of his own development gradually increases. In our discussions of the repercussions we focused upon the terror that results from the inner conflicts. This terror diminishes as the patient becomes clear about the direction he wants to take in his life. And his sense of direction alone gives him a greater feeling of unity and strength. Yet there is still another fear attached to his forward moves, one which we have not yet fully appreciated. This is a realistic fear of not being able to cope with life without his neurotic props. The neurotic is after all a magician living by his magic powers. Any step toward self-realization means relinquishing these powers and living by his existing resources. But as he realizes that he can in fact live without such illusions, and even live better without them, he gains faith in himself.”

The problem with shoulds is that they are moving goal posts and therefore cannot be truly fulfilling. Even if one aims with all their energy and resources at perfect, the physical laws of reality prevent these goals from ever being achieved. Fulfillment comes from matching real skills to real challenges. Real achievements are never perfect but they are good in of themselves, for the simple reason that conditions have perceivably improved after an effort, so that it was worth it. Improvement creates meaning and purpose. Growth, meaning, and purpose make people feel alive. “Moreover any move toward being himself gives him a sense of fulfillment which is different from anything he has known before. And while such an experience is at first short lived, it may in time recur more and more often and for periods of longer duration. Even at first it gives him a greater conviction of being on the right path than anything else he may think or the analyst can say. For it shows him the possibility of feeling in accord with himself and with life. It is probably the greatest incentive for him to work at his own growth, toward a greater self-realization.”

The search for ideals is replaced by a search for achievable growth, which is similar to Karen’s symbolic description of gardening where expectation is more likely to be aimed at realization as opposed to perfection. The weather may be unfair, but one can try to protect the plants or to choose plants that are more hardy for the climate. A person tries to control what they can control and accept what they can’t control. “The fictitious values of the patient’s neurotic pride and of the phantoms of mastery, surrender, and freedom have lost much of their fascination and he is more strongly bent on realizing his given potentials. He still has ahead of him much work at hidden kinds of pride, of claims, of pretenses, of externalizations, etc. But, being more firmly grounded in himself, he can recognize them for what they are: a hindrance to his growth. Hence he is willing to discover them and to overcome them in time. And this willingness is now not (or, at least, is less) the frantic impatience to remove imperfections by magic. Having begun to accept himself as he is, with his difficulties, he also accepts the work at himself as an integral part of the process of living.”

As with projection, a person developing a constructive self will start to look at others as to whether they also have a learning mentality or harbour a destructive tendency. One can allow boundaries so that one protects one’s constructive goals but also expects others to have their own. The plant is trying to find a place in the garden. Friendships and intimate relationships become more about mutual development than ulterior motives. “Putting the work to be done in positive terms, it concerns all that is involved in self-realization. With regard to himself it means striving toward a clearer and deeper experiencing of his feelings, wishes, and beliefs; toward a greater ability to tap his resources and to use them for constructive ends; toward a clearer perception of his direction in life, with the assumption of responsibility for himself and his decisions. With regard to others it means his striving toward relating himself to others with his genuine feelings; toward respecting them as individuals in their own right and with their own peculiarities; toward developing a spirit of mutuality (instead of using them as a means to an end). With regard to work it means that the work itself will become more important to him than the satisfaction of his pride or vanity and that he will aim at realizing and developing his special gifts and at becoming more productive.”

These healthy relationships become something to protect, because common enemies, which are the destructive forces, are inevitably going to fall into envy, resentment, and sadistic sabotage to steal the wealth of the constructive communities, since they cannot tap into those same internal resources themselves. “While evolving in these ways, he also will sooner or later take a step that goes beyond his merely personal interests. Outgrowing his neurotic egocentricity, he will become more aware of the broader issues involved in his particular life and in the world at large. From having been in his own mind the uniquely significant exception he will gradually experience himself as part of a bigger whole. And he will be willing and able to assume his share of responsibility in it and contribute to it constructively in whatever way he is best able. This may concern—as in the example of [a] young businessman—the awareness of general issues in the group with which he is working. It may concern his place in the family, in the community, or in a political situation. This step is important not only because it widens his personal horizon but because the finding or accepting of his place in the world gives him the inner certainty which comes from the feeling of belonging through active participation.”

Inhibitions in Work

Neuroses can be clearly seen in the workplace because many of these toxic ideals have been internalized in those environments. These pathologies can manifest themselves in different ways. “There is the prodigious worker with seemingly inexhaustible energies, but the quality of his work remains far beneath his real potential. There are those who work frantically and consider wasted every hour not given to work. There are many who cannot concentrate. There are gifted persons who take up one pursuit after another, starting with enthusiasm, but soon dropping it. There are those who make sporadic efforts but lack consistency; those who scatter their energies in various directions; those who conceive brilliant ideas or projects but never get around to doing anything about them.”

Unfortunately, there’s no true psychology test that predicts realized potentials, including useless IQ tests that measure speed, but not a true potential and how it will be seen to its end in actuality. If stuck in a standstill with the belief that passively waiting for inspiration will do the trick, a person may be frozen at the same level forever. People will over or underestimate when they have no scientific results to compare. With gifts, “we cannot determine the extent of abilities before a person puts them to the test in the way of active work in the particular field. As long as he is inhibited to put them to the test, he is free to imagine either that he has supreme gifts or that he has none whatever. A highly intelligent person, for instance, may insist on being stupid. A person with great understanding for painting may deny the possibility that he could paint. Such an attitude may be an integral part of a pervasive self-berating; in addition there is usually an unconscious preference of resigning rather than exposing himself to ridicule. The fear of ridicule, in turn, is an expression of a felt discrepancy between superlative imagined achievement and realistic possibilities. On the opposite extreme are the patients who emphasize and aggrandize their potentialities, bask in them, but in actual fact never get beyond having brilliant ideas or projects. These are people who, to use a term of Kierkegaard’s, flounder in possibilities and shirk facing the necessity of down-to-earth work. In their imagination potentialities are the accomplished product and usually they claim the same recognition as if they had actually done the imagined deeds. Their pride is so overweening and so much based on sheer possibilities, that it does not permit of any putting to the test.

Like with a garden, it has to be tended to. Without water, soil, fertilizer and sunlight, which requires consistent work, growth is not likely to happen, and impatience in this regard may make people give up before the good results were to show themselves as a confirmation. “For us to achieve anything in any field, there must be a clear hierarchy of interest. We must decide where our main interest, our main ability lies. Also we must have the self-discipline necessary for putting in consistent effort in the chosen field. Needless to say, no productive work can ever be like the regularity of a machine. Relaxation will be necessary. Tolerance will be necessary for periods during which something is quietly growing within ourselves without anything being produced. Concerning consistency there are frequent difficulties. One of them is scattering of interests and energies in many directions. The background usually is an insistent refusal to recognize limitations. Against all evidence to the contrary, he feels that others may not be able to do so many things, but he can, and can do them all to perfection. To restrict his activities for him is not wisdom but would smell of defeat and contemptible weakness. The prospect of being a human being like others, with limitations like others, is degrading and thus intolerable. It almost goes without saying that he is not really related to any activity. He is consumed with having to prove his unlimited powers and unlimited excellence and is enslaved by these drives. Many neurotics, otherwise inertly wasting time with trivialities, are able to make sporadic efforts. Sporadic efforts, thus, rather feed the pride than detract from it. Consistent efforts are an insult to neurotic pride. ‘Every Tom, Dick, and Harry can get somewhere with plodding work!’ As long as no efforts are made, the pride is protected. There is, then, always the reservation that he would have accomplished something great if he had put in real efforts. The most hidden aversion against consistent efforts lies in the threat to the illusion of unlimited powers. Whether you want to or not, you will soon become aware that the garden does not turn into a blossoming paradise overnight. It will progress not more and not less than the amount of work you put in. You will have the same sobering experience when consistently working at reports or papers, when doing publicity work or teaching. There is a limit to your time, your energies, and to what you can achieve within these limits. As long as the neurotic holds on to his illusions of unlimited energies and unlimited achievements, he must by necessity be wary of exposing himself to such disillusioning experiences.”

A lot of the lack of self-esteem is because of unrealistic expectations of the quality and speed with which the work is done. As soon as an expectation of achievement is shown to be unrealistic, the false self begins to attack the true self, and constructive efforts are abandoned. This is why setting oneself up with grand expectations and desires for bragging rights tempts reality to demonstrate failure. With an experimental attitude, it was all about learning, mission accomplished!, and failure helps to correct future efforts. There’s no shame in testing reality. “Any work that is not mechanical routine requires a measure of self-confidence. Emerson expressed it in negative terms when he said: ‘It is because we minimize ourselves that we do not accomplish.’ It takes self-confidence to take one’s work seriously; the more so when the effort does not show immediate results. The more so, the less we are backed up by approval, but work alone or against opposition. The more so, the more decisions are to be made, risks to be taken. The more so, the more creative a work is. It takes supreme and unerring assertion for the creative artist to express his feelings and experiences. Self-idealization and glorification, while giving a feeling of importance, actually add to the inner uncertainty. They rob the neurotic of a solid base to stand on, alienate him from himself, and—even worse—make him inevitably turn against his true self with hatred and contempt. The kind of disturbance varies according to the whole structure. A spurious self-confidence may be in the foreground. Self-doubts are rigidly suppressed. The person in his imagination is his idealized image. There is nothing he cannot do. The mere possibility of failure is eliminated. Failures that do occur hardly register. Whatever is done appears to be wonderful. Overconfident people of another category likewise do not become aware of existing inhibitions toward work. They paint masterpieces, write masterbooks, make world-rocking inventions—in their imagination. Their self-contempt is not as effectively blotted out as in the previous group. Though hardly perceived in conscious awareness, a crushing dread of failure lurks around the corner. This dread, though mostly unconscious, works as a powerful deterrent from putting any abilities to the test of reality. Their pride, invested in limitless potentialities, is so brittle that it must be safeguarded by inactivity. As any weak position it requires further defenses. Thus they will often develop a secondary pride in the very fact of not working. They feel that they are above competition, above ambition. So they get more entrenched in their inertia. Then a third fortification becomes necessary. Any comparison with others achieving something—particularly others in their own age-group—threatens to demolish the whole lofty structure. So they have to avoid such contacts by withdrawing into an ivory tower. Whether producing in a glib opportunistic fashion or producing in imagination only, the person does not become aware of existing difficulties. These make themselves felt in all those who keep trying to work. With patient work he might come close to it. It may take quite some analysis to realize that here, too, the person is expecting the impossible and beats himself down if he cannot measure up to it. The compulsive nature of these processes prevents him from learning from his mistakes, from developing feasible working habits. The more responsibility a work requires, the more personal it is, the more the lack of self-confidence shows in still two other ways. We know that as a result of his divided self-evaluation the neurotic loses sight of his real self. He does not know what he really wants or believes. Hence he cannot or does not dare to make decisions. But in any personal work, decisions have to be made constantly. Because of the fading out of the real self, the neurotic often does not know or does not dare to know his own feelings. But for any creative work it is essential to be true to one’s feelings, to express one’s own experiences.”

I will teach you how to feel it! – “Acting As If” “Thinking from, not thinking of” – Elmer O. Locker Jr.: https://youtu.be/PZBSPQ6U_CU?si=nntqnGnwOzM-uYBE

If you see this , you are going to reverse your aging! – Elmer O. Locker Jr.: https://youtu.be/fdwjUFHce-4?si=uGlMuPOO0SXb852l

Ignore your reality, just keep assuming! Assume the desire is already fulfilled. – Neville Goddard: https://youtu.be/OSQ_JTAZVrY?si=08IOIi9YMbdYOoKu

When a life coach manifests nothing for you but debt and delusion – Juno Kelly: https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2025-07-14/manifestation-courses-life-coach-expensive-debt-regret

LifeCoachSnark subReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeCoachSnark/

The source of aliveness, is growth, but growth cannot come about without a sense of reality. To connect to authority figures a worker can make a search for reality and try to find commonality with them based on necessity while at the same time allowing personal meaning to permeate this work, because it’s a search for reality and realization. Realization again is an action to make reality improve in some way, which connects to personal meaning. It’s a form of lovemaking sublimated into work. This is a form of mindfulness that sticks to actions to make step-by-step improvements while letting go of destructive thoughts that take one out of reality, which is the important meaning of therapy: to not escape reality, but instead learning to love it. There’s also a need for work safety and periodic rest, because even love becomes tiring or accidents maim the worker into infirmity and helplessness, or the worker turns into a psychological basket case, as described above. “‘Without such an interest in the object for its own sake, it is impossible to grasp any reality at all.’ Success is dependent on many factors, largely outside ourselves; it is the work itself that must have meaning and value for us. Then, and then only, can we give ourselves to it with all our sensitivities, intelligence, imagination, energies. He may be so preoccupied with his difficulties and, therefore, become so egocentric that his capacity to love is badly impaired. His very inhibitions in work may be felt as such a blow to his pride that he withdraws interest or even develops a vindictive hatred for his work. Finally the tension and turmoil he feels while working may be so great that he cannot possibly love the work. Most frequently an existing alive interest for a work is deadened by the feeling of doing it under coercion and by the concomitant resentment. This process may be so deeply buried that merely its results show in the form of listlessness, fatigue, exhaustion. All of which points to the reason for the hypersensitivity to coercion lying within the person himself. And here he chafes indeed under a merciless tyranny of inner dictates, under the ‘tyranny of the should’ which is born from an unconscious presumptuous drive to be godlike and to attain the impossible. This inner tyranny is so cramping that as a means for escape he dreams of and craves unlimited freedom. This ‘freedom’ is not a constructive freedom for but merely a negative freedom from all coercion. It entails the mistaken motive that freedom consists in doing whatever you please at any moment. This wish, understandable considering its origin, usually turns into a claim: he is entitled to a life without any pressures, without any necessities. Any expectation from the outside, then, is felt as an unfair imposition and is met not only with anger but with indignation and with an irresistible impulse to frustrate all intents to ‘enslave,’ regardless of his own interest in the matter. The blind rebellion is directed not only against persons, institutions, circumstances, but also against any necessity inherent in the process of work. Thus he may start a job or a piece of creative writing with quite some zest but blindly rebel against the necessity to put in disciplined work in order to achieve something. Working, then, against inner resistances makes him listless and unproductive. His love for the work is tainted with distaste. People who on account of their self-hatred not only feel unlovable but try to blot out of their lives any hope for love. They feel it too much out of reach and throw all their energies into a pursuit of success. Psychologically they devote their lives to triumphing vindictively over others. These people logically, then, cannot love their work, partly because they cannot and do not want to love anything, partly because work for them is merely a means to an end.”

As in prior works, Karen Horney viewed neurosis as a horrible disease that can sink mankind if not taken seriously, because civilization is based on constructive lives and constructive projects, not on inhibition or destruction. “Multiplying the individual loss by the thousands, the inhibitions in work become a loss to mankind. They constitute a waste of human energies and should open everybody’s eyes to the necessity of combatting neurosis more seriously than is now being done.”

This waste can manifest in different work styles. The aggressive-expansive type overrates their “capacities and of the quality of their own work.” The aggressive-narcissistic type can also overrate their work and focus on sporadic efforts towards drama, glory, and the unique, to avoid being demeaned by the necessary regular efforts needed to pull off quality work. The arrogant-vindictive individual fuels considerable productivity towards revenge, but is threatened by every challenge and lives an empty life because the growth area in life has been abandoned. The aggressive-perfectionistic individual simply produces little or nothing at all until some standard of perfection is guaranteed to be achieved. The self-effacing type falls in underrating him or herself and is plagued by self-sabotage. The resigned-individual is caught in contrarianism and is only motivated by rebellion and sensitive to coercion.

The lack of attention towards reality, growth and self-realization is what is lacking in all these types that are distracted by neurotic goals. Even people who think they are “alive” may in fact be using their genuine true self resources only partially. “Real gifts, and the desire and capacity to express them, have to be free to approach self-realization…Artistic gifts occur in individuals quite independently of neurosis, but their expression can be seriously diminished by neurotic incapacity. The question of artistic work being contingent on neurosis arises frequently, but most often in the aggressive type. The expansive and rebellious types fear they may, through analysis, lose their angry, arrogant drive, and become self-effacing automatons. Along with this, they fear that they will begin to consider someone else’s criticism, which might weaken their self-confidence and destroy them. They also fear they might be too content after analysis to want to bother to create. Realistically, there are sufficient sources of drive and feeling and real interest without recourse to neurotic stresses, but to be able to tap these sources, the individual must be sufficiently alive to operate in spite of conflicts.”

To be alive, one has to be mainly in the present moment, and enough so that one can witness impulses arising. When sensing the painful and stifling ones, they can be left alone to decay naturally. When constructive impulses arise, they can be pursued with scientific interest. Positive impulses are a-ha! meanings on how to constructively improve reality in some way. Neurotic impulses hurt, damage, and inhibit motivation and scientific inquiry. To generate the ability to do things for their own sake, or for their own ends, is really to do things for your own ends. If you concentrate long enough on something, even if it appears boring at first, preference-ideas will arise on how to carefully improve that area of the environment in some way that your skills, talents and abilities are able to accomplish. Accomplishments are enjoyable, and you can string those little accomplishments from one part of the process to the next until you’re tired and need to rest. There can be a natural point where one asks for help and begins working with a team, which is the authentic way of joining an organization.

You can also purposefully develop skills so that your abilities increase, and consequently, your ability to enjoy also increases. The more you can improve, the more you can enjoy, and then the external rewards that come from industriousness don’t have to eclipse the entire process, but instead help to offset feelings of uselessness or exploitation when loving work has been underappreciated or rewarded with little to no pay. And finally, learning meditation to reduce over-effort-ing is another important skill.

Flow in 7 steps – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://psychreviews.org/flow-in-7-steps-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi/

How to motivate yourself – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gv3zl-how-to-motivate-yourself-freud-and-beyond.html

The Noble Eightfold Path: Right Effort (6/8): https://rumble.com/v1griaj-the-noble-eightfold-path-right-effort.html

Meditation in Daily Life Pt. 1: https://rumble.com/v6ypuoe-meditation-in-daily-life-pt.-1.html

Meditation in Daily Life Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v6yqee4-meditation-in-daily-life-pt.-2.html

Meditation in Daily Life Pt. 3: https://rumble.com/v6z2b1m-meditation-in-daily-life-pt.-3.html

This is NOT the Actualism method!: https://psychreviews.org/this-is-not-the-actualism-method/

A Contemplation Requirement

Statue: “Service Through Christ” ~ Herman Poulin

It’s easy to criticize with the knowledge of psychology, but many people live in a fog and from the vantage point of insight, of the enlightened onlooker, they can appear mechanical and robotic with their predictable reactions. This is especially true of older generations who have seen everything and watch the younger ones trip over the same elevated cracks in the sidewalk. “Ha ha ha! I don’t feel excluded when I see others make the same mistakes I did.” Those types need to realize that they were once in the same situation before they cracked open a book for the first time. Having some kind of contemplation practice is necessary to look inside the reality of oneself. For those late bloomers, it’s better to start now, even if in the later part of one’s life story. “All of us have an interest in not being aware of certain feelings, drives, conflicts, qualities within ourselves. The particular content of such unconscious factors depends upon the whole personality structure. A person, for instance, who persistently keeps himself down is unconsciously interested in being unaware of his assets; a person who needs to keep others at a distance is unconsciously interested in being unaware of his need for affection. Briefly, this is one of the basic tenets with which we work in psychoanalytic therapy. The paucity of inner experiences to be discussed here is a more pervasive haziness of all, or most, inner experiences. The entire threshold of awareness is lowered.”

Horney’s need to add meditation to her therapeutic modality was because of what Heidegger also pointed out, in that modern society was decapitated by over-intellectualism and lost connection with their body and vibration. “Another shift of functions—likewise of far-reaching importance—is that from being to thinking. To speak in terms of Zen Buddhism: ‘Life is not a problem to be solved but an experience to be realized.‘ The more remote a person is from his inner life, the more abstract his thinking. The less alive he is, the more he may turn into a thinking machine. The more he is cut off from a spontaneous contact with the world around him, the more the subjectivity of his thoughts becomes self-evident truth. The greater his need for superiority (for whatever reasons), the more imperative the necessity of foresight and omniscience.”

Feelings can move from reality into imagination as a habit and create all kinds of problems, including pathological super-ego entities that are distorted. Because one was raised from childhood this way, a contemplation practice is needed to be able to see inside and notice the consequences of those phantoms. “Not only the faculty of thinking but also that of willing may assume, as it were, a life of its own. Separate from the context and the reality of the whole living person, it may soar into the fantastic and turn into sheer magic. The belief in the omnipotence of the mind or in its magic powers stems from other sources, but it is perpetuated and reinforced by the unavailability of inner experiences.”

The challenge with introspection is being able to tolerate the pain of real failure compared to one’s attachment to unrealistic ideals. As Nietzsche observed, our concepts, metaphors, and ideals are imperfect, and hence partially illusory, and in the case of the Ancient Greeks, he felt that they soothed the horror of the world by inventing Gods to provide a meaning of life. If people are following illusions, they are not just confused but they need these illusions to make meaning out of meaningless existence. Aristotle quoted the wisdom of Silenus, which was a primordial anti-natalist philosophy, inspired by lives of total and complete hardship and destruction, as you can imagine those people living in the ancient world, they must have had short lifespans. Because life is imperfect, it’s easy to fall into a suicidal nihilism.

“You, most blessed and happiest among humans, may well consider those blessed and happiest who have departed this life before you, and thus you may consider it unlawful, indeed blasphemous, to speak anything ill or false of them, since they now have been transformed into a better and more refined nature. This thought is indeed so old that the one who first uttered it is no longer known; it has been passed down to us from eternity, and hence doubtless it is true…It is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live; and this is confirmed even by divine testimony.”

Aristotle, Eudemus (354 BCE), surviving fragment quoted in Plutarch, Moralia. Consolatio ad Apollonium, sec. xxvii (1st century CE) (S. H. transl.)

“In order to understand this dread, we must consider that the general lowering of awareness has important functions. It keeps a person from recognizing contradictions, discrepancies, and pretenses in his personality, or, generally speaking, from recognizing an existing disorder. It makes it possible not to let his left hand know what his right hand does. He may remain unaware, for instance, that his actions toward employees are contrary to his fine social sentiments, or that his amiability is artificial and not in accord with his using people as stepping-stones toward his own glory. In short, unawareness protects illusions and unconscious pretenses.”

People may say that the world is all meaningless, that Gods are projections for survival, but having a constructive meaning given to an individual could just easily be recognized as spiritual coercion. Emptiness of meaning gives freedom for the individual to test their skills and their value so as to create their own place of meaning in trade with other people in society, where at minimum people need healthcare, food, clothing, and shelter, which is typically the preoccupation of most people at most times. Conviviality with other humans living in the same reality can be enough meaning for most people to continue on. Of course, big tent religions can also provide goals for meaningful social cohesion in the existing world culture. “…He begins to realize feelingly that his emptiness is not a plain, unalterable fact, but that there is an alive core of himself that wants to live and that reaches out for a meaning.” Again, there needs to be an ability to take a stand constructively out of a learning mentality to preserve the sense that we can give or withdraw our contribution. We matter, therefore we feel unblocked from our past actions so we can redeem ourselves with new constructive actions. We need to feel the emotions of failure with the realization that nothing helps except taking more meaningful stands and actions that addressed what we learnt from the most recent failure. “To put it in terms of Kierkegaard: it seems that only if we do no longer will the impossible do we have a glimpse of the possible—which gives us a sense of inner freedom.”

In contradistinction to Freud, Horney wanted to move towards a realistic positive attitude with therapy as opposed to continuing psychoanalytic pessimism. If the basic anxiety is fueled by unrealistic fears and expectations, then when those erode, after an exhaustive examination of reality, then not only do defenses become useless and discarded by the patient, they can challenge irrational cultural attitudes. One can now pick one’s battles, and the question arises as to what is ultimately constructive at any moment. “As the inner compulsive forces lose their grip on him, the person’s hostility actually becomes meaningless, just as it would be meaningless for him to have a revolver at hand if he no longer needed to defend himself. When he sees how he has been driven toward this or that feeling or attitude, he begins to ask himself: Who am I? What do I feel? What do I want? What do I believe? He starts to come home to himself. He begins to taste how it feels to be alive, and since feeling alive is the most precious thing that we have on this earth, he wants more of it. Something constructive and creative starts to grow in him. He develops an increasingly strong wish to fulfill himself and to have a meaningful life.”

As people who are more or less healthy begin to group together, they find a place in culture to push back against the forces of destruction. They become the sanity that is needed when events of destruction rear their ugly head time and again. They try to legislate to foster social cohesion against runaway neuroses. “We have too little faith nowadays in the power of constructive forces, and one of the ways in which this lack of faith shows is in the frequency with which the following question is raised: Granted that you can help a person, but if this person remains in or returns to the environment or culture that originally made him sick, will he not succumb to the adverse influences again? Actually, just the opposite holds true. A person who has acquired a positive, productive attitude toward himself and life in general through analytical work will in turn exert a positive influence on the people around him.”

It doesn’t have to be a splitting of all or nothing. Truly some people cannot live in society due to intractable mental illness, and if they become an unrelenting danger to society: a moral hazard, then psychiatric institutions were made for the purposes as well as prisons for repeat offenders. The rest of the population has a potential for both destructive and constructive impulses and cultivation can move more in one direction or another. Choices have to be made about leaving countries, leaving companies, leaving governments, to find like minded constructive people to instill meaningful order in chaotic and destructive environments and cultures. “Our experience as analysts has convinced us that the alternative to a pessimistic view of human nature is not the belief that man is good by nature but that he has, as do all living beings, an innate urge and capacity to realize his given potentialities. The hope of mankind for a more constructive living together is not an illusion but a realistic possibility. We must recognize, however, that this possibility will not materialize without serious and concerted effort on the part of every single one of us.”

Ego Psychology: Anna Freud Pt. 10: https://rumble.com/v6snovr-ego-psychology-anna-freud-pt.-10.html

For all psychotherapists, and for all those who have to work with anxiety, there are three questions we have to use to orient ourselves regarding the emotional insecurity that gets the ball rolling towards destructive attitudes:

1. What is the nature of the danger or what has been endangered? We would all agree that what is endangered is an essential value (or what the person feels is an essential value).
2. What is endangering? What is the threatening factor?
3. Since helplessness is an essential part of every anxiety, what accounts for the helplessness? Is the helplessness objectively real or subjectively felt as real?

By operating out of constructive motivations, and detecting when anxiety is beginning to fuel tendencies toward destruction, we don’t have to follow instant reactions from emotional impulses and ask “is anxiety something paralyzing, or is it constructive? We know it can be both a moving or paralyzing force. Is it better to ask under which conditions it is a moving force and under which it is paralyzing? Is it valuable to experience, endure, and stick through anxiety under all conditions or only under certain conditions?”

Towards the end of Karen’s life, she became interested in Eastern contemplative practices, including Buddhism and Morita Therapy. She struggled to integrate the psychodynamic allowing of a full expression and acknowledgement of emotion with the method of letting go of all content. In which conditions should we validate and express our emotions? In which conditions is it better to let go? The aliveness of Karen’s method would contrast with that of the preservation of peace and emotional regulation in Buddhism.