Originally a founding member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, Karen Horney was a follower of Freud’s doctrine. But as so many other psychoanalysts of the period, she eventually broke up with Freudian psychoanalysis to pursue innovative ideas and detached from the ever more cultish Freudian psychoanalytic movement.
In her last book, she unfolds her doctrine and portrays the theory of the neurotic process as a hindrance to human development - it is a rich book full of original ideas. Horney is an optimistic voice in the crowd of theoretical psychoanalysts, a big believer in the growth instinct inside each human being. Her opening words (after the foreword) are:
Whatever the conditions under which a child grows up, he will, if not mentally defective, learn to cope with others in one way or another and he will probably acquire some skills. But there are also forces in him which he cannot acquire or even develop by learning. You need not, and in fact cannot, teach an acorn to grow into an oak tree, but when given a chance, its intrinsic potentialities will develop. Similarly, the human individual, given a chance, tends to develop the unique alive forces of his real self; the clarity and depth of his own feelings, thoughts, wishes, interests; the ability to tap his own resources, the strength of his will power. All this will in time enable him to find his set of values and aims in life. In short, he will grow, substantially undiverted, toward self-realization.
The part of one personality that is spontaneous and strives for growth is coined real self by the author.
Horney’s main doctrine is that the majority of our psychological problems as humans and disturbances to the mentioned process are the result of a neurotic conflict, the central inner conflict.
From this point on, the discussed topics are my interpretations and thoughts, not Horney’s.
Superficially, neurotic resignation and spiritual detachment seems alike in nature.
However, there are various and important differences between the two. The motivation for ones detachment, in the case of neurotic resignation, is escapism - running away from life and from the hard feelings produced by it’s clashes with the internal unrealistic image of oneself - as opposed to accepting reality and oneself as they are. This difference is the root of all others in my opinion - it leads the resigned person to experience emotions shallowly, as if they are happening to someone else; While for the spiritually detached person, experiencing his emotions fully is an ecstatic part of life. This difference also presents itself externally - the resigned person appears to others as someone without a zest of life in their eyes, closed to the world; while a spiritual person appears calm and present.
Reading this book, I have recognized aspects of myself that I have worked on and resolved, as well as ongoing personal struggles. I think a self aware person reading through this book is likely to find descriptions matching their character dysfunctions, and understand themselves better - which is always a good thing. I am sure to continue working and take responsibility for the flaws I have seen in myself, and hope that the insights from the book will help me resolve them.
As a regular meditation practitioner, the topic of meditation and the changes it brings to oneself is one that often surfaces in conversations with others. There is a dialectic in the perception of meditation which I would call the short-long meditation understanding dialectic. The words short and long refer to short and long terms effects of meditation as preached by various people.
Nowadays in western society, a common thesis to understanding the process of meditation is “raise your self awareness, and notice when negative emotions start arising; then you would be able to control yourself and improve your handling of everyday tasks - instead of losing your calm and expressing your emotion in an unconstructive way”.
On the other hand, many eastern thinkers seem to hold the anti-thesis that meditation will turn the practitioner, in the long run, into someone in whom negative emotions arise ever more rarely, until - in an enlightened person - they would not arise at all (the topic of whether there is such a thing as an “enlightened person” is one that would have to wait for another day); and that focusing on short term effects, treating the symptoms of emotional instability might become counter-productive to that end.