Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis by Karen Horney

Author:Karen Horney
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Health & Fitness, Psychology, Medical, General, Behaviorism, Psychiatry, Neuroses, Pathological, Movements
ISBN: 9780393309409
Publisher: Norton
Published: 1992-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

Auxiliary Approaches to Artificial Harmony

[[131]]IT IS A commonplace that one lie usually leads to another, the second takes a third to bolster it, and so on till one is caught in a tangled web. Something of the sort is bound to happen in any situation in the life of an individual or group where a determination to go to the root of the matter is lacking. The patchwork may be of some help, but it will generate new problems which in turn require a new makeshift. So it is with neurotic attempts to solve the basic conflict; and here, as elsewhere, nothing is of any real avail but a radical change in the conditions out of which the original difficulty arose. What the neurotic does instead—and cannot help doing—is to pile one pseudo solution upon another. He may try, as we have seen, to make one face of the conflict predominate. He remains as torn as ever. He may resort to the drastic measure of detaching himself from others entirely; but though the conflict is set out of operation his whole life is put on a precarious basis. He creates an idealized self in which he appears triumphant and unified, but at the same time creates a new rift. He tries to do away with that rift by eliminating his inner self from the field of combat, only to find himself in an even more intolerable predicament.

So unstable an equilibrium requires still further measures to support it. He turns then to any one of [[132]] a number of unconscious devices, which may be classified as blind spots, compartmentalizing, rationalizing, excessive self-control, arbitrary Tightness, elusiveness, and cynicism. We shall not attempt to discuss these phenomena per se—that would be too intensive a task-but will show only how they are employed in connection with conflicts.

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