{"id":9047,"date":"2021-05-21T20:30:03","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T18:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/?p=9047"},"modified":"2021-05-21T20:30:03","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T18:30:03","slug":"neurotic-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/neurotic-needs\/","title":{"rendered":"The Neurotic Needs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cosmos4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Neurotic needs are compulsive attachments. “The various strategies the child adopts to cope with anxiety can eventually become persistent and irrational needs that cause both neurosis and personality disorder”<\/p>\n

“Basic anxiety is the foundation of the neurotic personality. Horney identifies ten strategies and corresponding needs that neurotics develop to cope with their excessive anxiety and feelings of helplessness and loneliness”
\nKaren Horney first listed these 10 “neurotic needs” in Self-Analysis, 1942.<\/p>\n

1. The neurotic need for affection and approval:
\n\u2022 Indiscriminate need to please others and to be liked and approved of by others;
\n\u2022 Automatic living up to the expectations of others;
\n\u2022 Center of gravity in others and not in self, with their wishes and opinions the only thing that counts;
\n\u2022 Dread of self-assertion;
\n\u2022 Dread of hostility on the part of others or of hostile feelings within self.<\/p>\n

2. The neurotic need for a “partner” who will take over one’s life:
\n\u2022 Center of gravity entirely in the “partner,” who is to fulfill all expectations of life and take responsibility for good and evil, his successful manipulation becoming the predominant task;
\n\u2022 Overvaluation of “love” because “love” is supposed to solve all problems;
\n\u2022 Dread of desertion;
\n\u2022 Dread of being alone.<\/p>\n

3. The neurotic need to restrict one’s life within narrow borders:
\n\u2022 Necessity to be undemanding and contented with little, and to restrict ambitions and wishes for material things;
\n\u2022 Necessity to remain inconspicuous and to take second place;
\n\u2022 Belittling of existing faculties and potentialities, with modesty the supreme value;
\n\u2022 Urge to save rather than to spend;
\n\u2022 Dread of making any demands;
\n\u2022 Dread of having or asserting expansive wishes.<\/p>\n

4. The neurotic need for power:
\n\u2022 Domination over others craved for its own sake;
\n\u2022 Devotion to cause, duty, responsibility, though playing some part, not the driving force;
\n\u2022 Essential disrespect for others, their individuality, their dignity, their feelings, the only concern being their subordination;
\n\u2022 Great differences as to degree of destructive elements involved;
\n\u2022 Indiscriminate adoration of strength and contempt for weakness;
\n\u2022 Dread of uncontrollable situations;
\n\u2022 Dread of helplessness.<\/p>\n

5. The neurotic need to exploit others and by hook or crook get the better of them:
\n\u2022 Others evaluated primarily according to whether or not they can be exploited or made use of;
\n\u2022 Various foci of exploitation–money (bargaining amounts to a passion), ideas, sexuality, feelings;
\n\u2022 Pride in exploitative skill;
\n\u2022 Dread of being exploited and thus of being “stupid.”<\/p>\n

6. The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige (may or may not be combined with a craving for power):
\n\u2022 All things–inanimate objects, money, persons, one’s own qualities, activities, and feelings–evaluated only according to their prestige value;
\n\u2022 Self-evaluation entirely dependent on nature of public acceptance;
\n\u2022 Differences as to use of traditional or rebellious ways of inciting envy or admiration;
\n\u2022 Dread of losing caste (“humiliation”), whether through external circumstances or through factors from within.<\/p>\n

7. The neurotic need for personal admiration:
\n\u2022 Inflated image of self (narcissism);
\n\u2022 Need to be admired not for what one possesses or presents in the public eye but for the imagined self;
\n\u2022 Self-evaluation dependent on living up to this image and on admiration of it by others;
\n\u2022 Dread of losing admiration (“humiliation”).<\/p>\n

8. The neurotic ambition for personal achievement:
\n\u2022 Need to surpass others not through what one presents or is but through one’s activities;
\n\u2022 Self-evaluation dependent on being the very best–lover, sportsman, writer, worker–particularly in one’s own mind, recognition by others being vital too, however, and its absence resented;
\n\u2022 Admixture of destructive tendencies (toward the defeat of others) never lacking but varying in intensity;
\n\u2022 Relentless driving of self to greater achievements, though with pervasive anxiety;
\n\u2022 Dread of failure (“humiliation”).<\/p>\n

9. The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence:
\n\u2022 Necessity never to need anybody, or to yield to any influence, or to be tied down to anything, any closeness involving the danger of enslavement;
\n\u2022 Distance and separateness the only source of security;
\n\u2022 Dread of needing others, of ties, of closeness, of love.<\/p>\n

10. The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability (see New Ways in Psychoanalysis, Chapter 13, on the super-ego, and Escape from Freedom, Chapter 5, on automaton conformity):
\n\u2022 Relentless driving for perfection;
\n\u2022 Rumination and self-recriminations regarding possible flaws;
\n\u2022 Feelings of superiority over others because of being perfect;
\n\u2022 Dread of finding flaws within self or of making mistakes;
\n\u2022 Dread of criticism or reproaches.<\/p>\n

Horney, Karen (1945). Our Inner Conflicts: The Constructive Theory of Neurosis. New York: W. W. Norton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neurotic needs are compulsive attachments. “The various strategies the child adopts to cope with anxiety can eventually become persistent and irrational needs that cause both neurosis and personality disorder” “Basic anxiety is the foundation of the neurotic personality. Horney identifies ten strategies and corresponding needs that neurotics develop to cope with their excessive anxiety and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[660,709,1200],"tags":[788,1210],"class_list":["post-9047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-gesundheit","category-psychologie","tag-awareness","tag-personality-disorder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toktali.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}