A seminar presentation I'd made for as part of my post-grad psych curriculum. Technically Jung and Alder being here is a problem for some, but it was what the faculty wanted added.

1. Neo-Freudians
Dr (Maj) Ashutosh Ratnam
Resident Psychiatry
1

2. OVERVIEW
Introduction
Definition
Contentions within Freudian Psychoanalytical
Theory
Individual Neo-Freudians
Karen Horney
Erich Fromm
Harry Stack Sullivan
 Alfred Adler & Carl Jung
2

3. Neo-Freudians
3
“A somewhat imprecise term embracing those analysts who follow
Freud but who depart in one or other way from classic analytic
theory.
Jung and Adler founded their own schools of psychoanalysis and
may or may not be regarded as Neo-Freudians; in general Neo-
Freudians are represented by Karen Horney, Erich Fromm and
Harry Stack Sullivan together with their followers.
They place great emphasis on
 the reaction of the individual to his current environment,
 anxiety
 the patient doctor relationship .
There is less emphasis on sexuality and the analysis of infantile
sexual experiences”
Campbell’s Psychiatric Dictionary, 2009

4. Neo-Freudianism
4
“….modifications, extension or revisions of Freud’s original
psychoanalytic theory, most commonly to those that
emphasise social, cultural and interpersonal elements rather
than innate biological instincts such as sexuality or
aggression.
Major theorists include
Erich Fromm
Karen Horney
Harry Stack Sullivan”
Friedman H, Scharzer R Encyclopaedia of Mental Health, 1998

5. 5 Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theory
1. Topographical Model
2. Structural Model
3. Instincts and Anxieties
4. Psychosexual Human
Development
5. Assumptions on Human
Nature

6. 6
Topographical & Structural Models
Believed the really significant
aspects of behaviour are shaped &
directed by impulses and drives
totally outside the realm of
awareness
 Id = original/oldest personality
system
Expresses the primary principle of
life i.e. the immdt discharge of
psychic energy produced by
biologically rooted drives which if
pent up produces tension
throughout personality system
(c/a PLEASURE PRINCIPLE)

7. Instincts & Anxieties
 Law of Conservation of Energy
 Psychic Energy source = Neurophysiological states of excitation
 Goal of all human behaviour = reduction of tension created by
unpleasant accumulation of energy over time
 i.e. total amount of psychic energy deriving from tissue needs is invested in
mental activities designed to reduce excitation created by body tissue
needs
 INSTINCT
 Mental representation of bodily excitations reflected in the form of wishes
 Innate bodily state of excitation which seeks expression / tension release
 “Instincts are the ultimate cause of all activity”
1. Life Instincts – e.g. Libido
2. Death Instincts – e.g. aggression, suicide, murder
 Follows ENTROPY
 “The goal of all life is death”
7

8. Instincts & Anxieties (cont)
DISPLACEMENT
8
 Original object-choice of instinct cannot be reached
Unable to obtain direct gratification → Displacement of
instinctual energy onto persons/things/activities other than
those permitting direct tension release
Suggested entire fabric of civilisation can be understood by
displacement of sex and aggression instinct
“It is a shattering experience for anyone seriously committed to the Western
tradition of morality and rationality to take a steadfast, unflinching look at
what Freud had to say. It is humiliating to be compelled to admit the grossly
seamy side of so many grand ideals” – N Brown, 1959

9. Psychosexual Stages
The major factor underlying human development is sexual
instinct as it passes through erogenous zones during early
developmental years
 Frustration
 Overindulgance
 Psychosexual development is
 Biologically determined
 Invariant in nature of unfolding
 Characteristic of all persons regardless of cultural heritage
 Social experiences leave some residue as attitudes/values/traits
9
OVERINVESTMENT
of libido
RESIDUAL
BEHAVIOURS &
PESONALITY
assoc with each
stage

10. • Every child has an incestuous, unconscious desire to
MALES = OEDIPUS FEMALES = ELECTRA
10
Psychosexual Stages (contd)
 Mother is initial love object
 Attempts to seduce mother, etc
 Father perceived as competition
 Castration anxiety
 Resolution
 Repression of sexual desire
 Identification with aggressor
 Vicariously keeps mother as love
object
 Superego = heir to resolution of
Oedipus complex
 Mother is initial love object
 Phallic Stage → Realises she has
no penis
 PENIS ENVY
 Hostility towards mother
 Desire to possess father due to
presence of enviable organ
 Resolution
 Competitor (mother) is not as
threatening a figure
 Absence of penis → cannot develop
as strong fear of castration
• possess the opposite-sexed parent
• dispose of the same sexed-parent

11. 11

12. Position on Human Nature
 Illusion of freedom
12
 All human events governed by powerful instinctual forces (sex + aggression)
 Incapable of ‘choosing’ courses of action
 Irrational
 Motivated by uncontrollable forces outside sphere of conscious awareness
 Constitutionalism (VS ENVIRONMENTALISM)
 Concepts derived from Neuroanatomy + Neurophysiology
 Id is inherited (oldest + primary basis of personality)
 Psychosexual stages invariable regardless of culture
 Unchangability
 Indl is fixated on psychosexual stage
 Basic character is formed early in life and remains unaltered into adult years

13. Strong Moderate Slight Midrange Slight Moderate Strong
Freedom Determinism
Rationality Irrationality
Holism Elementalism
Constitutionalism Environmentalism
Changeability Unchangability
Subjectivity Objectivity
Proactivity Reactivity
Homeostasis Heterostasis
Knowability Unknowability

14. 14 Karen Horney
1. Biography
2. Childhood + Need for
Safety
3. Basic Anxiety
4. Neurotic Needs + Trends
5. The Self Image
6. Feminism
“I do not want to found a new school but to build
on the foundations Freud has laid”
– Horney, in Quinn, 1987 pg 318

15. Biography
 Karen Danielsen, b near Hamburg, Germany 1885
 2nd Born child, strongly envied Berndt (older brother)
15
 “I know that as a child I wanted for a long time to be a boy, that I envied Berndt
because he could stand near a tree and pee” – Horney, 1980 pg 252
 Father 50yrs
 Domineering, Religious, Imperious, Withheld Affection
Mother 33yrs
 Spirited, Freethinking, Affectionate
 Upto 8 yrs → clinging + compliant
 9 yrs onwards → Ambitious + rebellious
 Realised later her hostility was secondary to perceived lack of affection
 Numerous Romantic/Amorous relationships
 Decided being in love temporarily eliminated anxiety and insecurity, offered an
escape

16. Biography (contd)
 Career choice of Medicine always clear
 1906 joined University of Freiburg
 Marriage + Career
16
 m Oskar Horney → Cold, withdrawn, abused daughters
 Numerous affairs → Did not achieve earlier escape from anxiety
 Brother died of Pneumonia → Suicide Attempt → Psychoanalysis by Karl
Abraham
 Psychoanalysis
 Not successful
 Told of childhood Oedipal longings for powerful father
 “Her readiness to abandon herself to such patriarchal figures was betrayed
by her leaving her handbag (Freudian symbol of female genitals) in my
office on her very first visit”
 Convinced to take SELF-ANALYSIS

17. Importance of Childhood
 Importance of early years of childhood in shaping personality
 Social Forces, not biological forces
 No universal developmental stages or inevitable childhood conflicts
 Social relationship between parents and children
 Safety need = “need for security and freedom from fear” (1973)
 Eroded by withholding warmth and affection
 Basic hostility is first response
1. If successful → Aggressive coping strategies
2. If unsucessful → Child represses hostility
 Intimidation
 Fear of losing (fake) expressed love
 Guilt
 Repressed hostility → Basic Anxiety
17

18. Basic Anxiety : Foundation of Neurosis
 “An insidiously increasing, all-pervading feeling of being
lonely and helpless in a hostile world” (Horney, 1973 pg 89)
 Attempts to control basic anxiety
1. Securing love and affection
2. Being Submissive
3. Attaining Power
 Achieve success through a sense of superiority
4. Withdrawing
 Blunting/Minimising emotional needs
Self-protective mechanisms
 Defence against pain, not a pursuit of well-being
 Powerful + Intense = more compelling than sexual/physiological needs
 Reduce anxiety but personality is left deficient
 Usually one mechanism overbears the other three

19. Neurotic Needs
 Affection and Approval
Self-sufficiency
Power
Exploitation of others
Setting Narrow Limits to Life
Perfection
 Prestige or Social
Recognition
Achievement or Ambition
Personal Admiration
A Dominant or Powerful
Partner
• Abnormal in a neurotic as
• Unrealistic/Unreasonable/Indiscriminate
• Intense → Extreme Anxiety if not met
• Intensive and compulsive pursuit of their satisfaction as the only
way to resolve basic anxiety
• Do not aid indl feel safe/secure
• Aid the desire to escape discomfort caused by anxiety

20. Neurotic Trends
Trend Moving TOWARDS
others
Moving AGAINST
others
20
Moving AWAY
FROM others
Personality Compliant Aggressive Detached
Basic source
• Repressed
of Neurotic
Trend
Hostility & Desire
to Manipulate/
Exploit
• Insecurity and
Anxiety
• Protection
against hostile
world
• Need to Feel
Superior
• Desparate
Desire for
Privacy
Neurotic
Needs
• Affection &
Approval
• Powerful Partner
• Power
• Exploitation
• Social Prestige
& Recognition
• Personal
Admiration
• Personal
Achievement
• Self-sufficiency
• Perfection
• Narrow Limits
to Life
Normal
analogue
Friendly, loving Healthy
competitiveness
Serene Autonomy

21. Neurotic Trends to Neurosis
Aggressive
21
NEUROSIS
Neurotics are
• Rigid
• Inflexible
• Meet all situations with
behaviours and attitudes
characteristic of dominant
trend
• Regardless of suitability

22. 22
Safety
Needs
NORMAL
UNMET
BASIC
HOSTILITY
SN
MET
Aggressive
Coping Strategies
SN Unmet,
Repressed
BASIC
ANXIETY
Self Protective Mech
1. Securing love and
affection
2. Being Submissive
3. Attaining Power
4. Withdrawing
.
Neurotic
Needs
NEUROSIS
CONFLICT
Neurotic Trends
1. Aggressive
2. Compliant
3. Detached

23. Normal Self-Image Neurotic Idealised Self-Image
1. Based on realistic appraisal
of abilities, potential +
working
2. Flexible, dynamic, adapts as
the indl develops and
changes
3. Functions as a goal +
encourages growth
1. Based on unattainable
ideal of absolute perfection
2. Static, inflexible and
unyielding
3. Hinders growth by
1. demanding rigid
adherence
2. Providing illusion of self
which does not allow
correction of cause of
anxiety / insecurity

24. Self image in the Neurotic 24
• Splits self into
• Despised self-image
• Idealised self-image
• Swings between hating
self and pretending to be
perfect
Pretending Perfection Self-hatred
• Neurotic Search for Glory
• Need for perfection
• Vindictive triumph
• Neurotic Ambition
• Neurotic Claim
• Neurotic Pride
• Self-accusation
• Self-frustration
• Self-torture
• Self-destructive actions/impulses

25. Feminine Psychology
Freud – Women suffered from:
Penis envy
 Incompletely developed morality (Electra conflicts
inadequately resolved)
 Inferior body images (believed they were castrated men)
Womb Envy
 Men envy women because of their capacity for motherhood
 Based on pleasure she experienced during childbirth
 Men overcompensate for womb envy by
 Overachieving at work
 Indulge in behaviour designed to disparage/belittle women
 Form social dictums to reinforce inferior status
25

26. Feminine Psychology (Cont)
Oedipus complex
Conflict between parents and children did not have sexual
origin
Conflict between Dependence on Parents & Hostility towards
them
Conflict NOT Universal
 Develop only when parents undermine child’s sense of security
26

27. FREUD HORNEY
Personality governed by
un-modifiable biological factors
Personality governed by
management of safety needs
of child
Conflict of childhood – sexual
coveting of mother
Conflict of childhood – basic
hostility v/s dependence
Conflict of childhood was
universal
Only present if upbringing
compromised
Inferiority of women a
biological reality
Reinforced by social trends
stemming from male basic
anxiety
Penis envy Womb envy
27

28. 28
“We shall not be very
greatly surprised if a
woman analyst, who has
not been sufficiently
convinced of the intensity
of her own wish for a
penis, also fails to attach
proper importance to that
factor in her patients” –
Freud, 1940

29. 29 Harry Stack Sullivan
1. Biography
2. Interpersonal Psychology
Structure of Personality
Dynamisms
 Personifications
 Cognitive Processes
Dynamics of Personality
Tensions – Needs & Anxieties
Development of Personality
 Stages of Development

30. Biography
 Born on an isolated farm in Near Norwich, NY 21 Feb 1892
 Irish-Catholic immigrants of modest financial means
 Mother was 39yrs when he was born
 Two older sons had both died before 1yr age
 Extreme discomfort and awkwardness in social relationships
 Exacerbated by own homosexuality (Perry, 1982)
30
 Viewed homosexuality as pathological and impediment to full-adaptive functioning
and integration to adult society
 Suffered schizophrenic breakdown & hospitalised (Perry 1972, 1982)
 Acquired unique insight into origins of problems + overcoming of difficulties
 First to initiate therapeutic communities
 Awareness of own deficits
 Attribution to restricted exposure to interpersonal learning experiences during
growing years

31. Structure of Personality
Personality
 Purely hypothetical entity
 Cannot be observed or studied apart from interpersonal situations
 Other person need not be present – can be illusory or non-existent figure
 Perceiving, remembering, thinking, imaging and all other psychological processes
are interpersonal in character.
 “Psychiatry is the study of phenomena that occur in interpersonal situations, in
configurations of two or more people all but one of whom may be more or less
completely illusionary” 1964, pg 33
 Unit of study is interpersonal situation and not the person
 Though hypothetical, personality is at the dynamic centre of various
processes that occur in a series of interpersonal fields
 Dynamisms
 Dynamism of Self / Self-system
 Personifications
 Cognitive processes
31

32. Structure of Personality - Dynamism
Dynamism – “The relatively enduring pattern of energy
transformations which recurrently characterise the organism
in its duration as a living organism” Sullivan, 1953
 Overt and Public – talking
 Covert and Private – thinking, fantasizing
 Dynamisms which are distinctly human in character are those which
characterise one’s interpersonal relations
 Habitually hostile behaviour twds person/group → Dynamism of Malevolence
 Habitually seeking lascivious relations with women → Dynamism of lust
 Habitually afraid of strangers → Dynamism of fear
 Any habitual reaction towards one/more persons in the form of a
feeling, an attitude or an overt action = Dynamism
 Most dynamisms satisfy basic needs of organism
 Dynamism of self / self-system guards against anxiety
32

33. Dynamics of Personality - Tensions
 Organism is a tension system varying between
absolute relaxation (euphoria) ↔ absolute tension (extreme terror)
 Two main sources of tension are
1. Needs of the Organism
a) Physiochemical Requirements – food, water
b) Emotional Needs – human contact, expressing talent / ability
2. Anxiety – real / imaginary threats to security
Tensions can be regarded as
 Needs for particular
 energy transformations which will Dissipate tension
 With accompanying change of mental state c/a satisfaction
NEED Creates TENSION provokes
Energy
Transfrmtn
which
dissipate
Tension
SATISFACTION

34. Dynamics of Personality - Anxiety
 “Experience of tension resulting from real or imaginary threats to
one’s existence” – Sullivan, 1950
Anxiety results from interpersonal relations
 To avoid anxiety people adopt protective measures and supervisory
controls over own behaviour
 Anxiety in mother → Transmitted to infant → Surrounding objects become
anxiety inducing → Infant Learns to avoid activities which induce anxiety
 When cannot escape anxiety, tends to sleep c/a somnolent detachment
Varies in intensity based upon
 Seriousness of threat
 Effectiveness of security operations person has

35. Self-System
 Protective Measures + Supervisory Controls over behaviour =
Self-System
Self-System
 Sanctions certain behaviour → Good-me self
 Forbids other behaviour → Bad-me self
 Excludes from consciousness → Not-me self
 Self system
 Isolates from remainder of personality
 Excludes information selectively → Prevents profit from experience
 Held in high esteem and protected from criticism
 “is a product of the irrational aspects of society and would not exist in a
more rational society”

36. Prototaxic Mode Parataxic Mode Syntactic Mode
Infancy + Early
childhood
Early Childhood Development of
Language +
Consensual validation
• Disconnected
Momentary
Experiences as
totalities
• No temporal
relationship
• Momentary
Experiences
recorded in
sequence
• Apparent
connection present
• Logical order
between
experiences
• Temporal
sequencing
• No meaning for
experiencing person
• Symbolic / Co-incidental
connections
• Logic absent
• Logical connections
• External validity
• Internal
Consistency
Mystical experiences,
Schizophrenic
fusions
Transference,
paranoid ideation
Normal mature
thinking

37. 37
Development
Era
Age Cognitive
Mode
Primary Need Effects of
Anxiety
Infancy Birth to onset of
Language
Prototaxic Bodily Contact
Tenderness
Apathy
Somnolent
detachment
Childhood Onset of
language to
beginning
school
Parataxic Parents’ praise
+ acceptance
Mod – chronic
anxiety,
insecurity
Severe –
Malevolent
Transformation
Juvenile 5-8yrs Parataxic Approval +
acceptance
outside family
Too great need
to control /
dominate
Restrictive /
Prejudiced
Preadolescence 8-12 yrs Syntactic Genuine
intimacy with
chum
Inability to
develop
attachment, love
Adolescence Puberty
onwards
Syntactic -do- + lust

38. Practical Applications
 Psychopathology results from excessive anxiety during
development of self system, limiting
 Opportunities for interpersonal satisfaction
 Development of adequate security operations
 “struggling to maintain self-esteem with very limited means”
 “a system or series of systems of interpersonal processes
arising from participant observation in which the interviewer
derives certain conclusions about the interviewee”
 Elucidation of patient’s interpersonal patterns
 Exploring their usefulness in servicing patient’s needs
 Considering alternative, more favourable possibilities

39. Practical Applications
1. Inception
 Contract / roles stipulated
2. Reconnaisance
 10-15 sessions
 Recurring patterns identified, adaptive / maladaptive qualities
assessed
3. Detailed Inquiry
 Parataxic distortions recognised, clarified and changed
4. Termination
 Ultimate goal = experience as much in the syntactic mode
 Broaden repertoire of self-system

40. FREUD SULLIVAN
Personality governed by
un-modifiable biological factors
40
Personality governed by
interpersonal interactions

41. 41 Erich Fromm
1. Biography
2. Personality Theory
The Human Dilemma
Escape from Freedom
Human needs
Mechanisms of Escape from
Freedom
Orientations

42. Biography
42
 Studied Sociology, Psychology and Philosophy at University of
Heidelberg
PhD at 22yrs
Trained in Psychoanalysis at Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute
 Founded Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute
 Integration of Freud’s theory of dynamic unconscious with Karl
Marx’s theory of history + social criticism
 c/a Humanistic Psychoanalyst, Marxian Personality Theorist
 Pref Dialectic humanist

43. Human Dilemma
Persons feel lonely and isolated because they have become
separated from nature and each other
 Minimised adaptive instincts
 Acquired faculty to reason c/a human dilemma
 Capable of conceptualising goal of self-realisation but aware life is too short to
reach goal
 Aware of dichotomy of life & death
1. Face Aloneness, chose individuation
 Regain sense of unity on a new, higher level
 Addressing basic human needs
2. Construct illusions which engender false feeling of safety / security
 Escape from freedom
43

44. Human Needs
44
S.N Need Description
1. Relatedness Deep feeling of unity with self and others
2. Transcendence Need to rise above animal nature, and become
a creative person
3. Rootedness Need to feel an integral part of the world, to feel
one belongs
4. Identity Need to feel unique
5. Frame of Orientation Reference point to establish and maintain a
meaningful and stable perception of the world
6. Excitation and
Stimulation
Distinct from simple stimuli, entail striving for
goals

45. Methods of Escape from Freedom
1. Authoritarianism
 Tendency to give up own independence and fuse the self with
someone / something outside the self
 To acquire strength which indl lacks
 E.g. Sadism / Masochism
2. Destructiveness
 Striving to remove all standards against which one may be
compared
3. Automation Conformity
 Escape from individual identity by becoming as like those around as
possible
 Lay aside own thoughts, actions, feelings
 Eager to live up to expectations / wishes of others

46. Unproductive Character Orientations
 A person’s relatively permanent way of relating to people and things
Trait Receptive Exploitative Hoarding Marketing
Qualities • Feel all good
lies outside
themselves
• Hope for
someone to
solve their
problems
• Feel all good
lies outside
themselves
• Aggressively
act to take
what they
desire
• Seek to
save what
they
ALREADY
have
• Distant and
remote
• Feel empty
and
compensate by
gaining
material
success
• Regard
personality as
commodity
• Adjust to fit
others’ desires
Negative Passivity
Submissiveness
Conceited
Arrogant
Seductive
Rigidity
Compulsivity
Detachment
Opportunism
Positive Loyalty
Friendliness
Trust
Pride
Charm
Self-confidence
Orderliness
Punctuality
Cleanliness
Malleability
Generosity

47. Productive Character Orientation
 Productive love – level at which people rise above
 Egos
 Separation from fellow humans
 Basic loneliness
47
The only constructive resolution to the problem of basic human
loneliness
 Productive-hoarding type v/s Non-productive hoarding type

48. 48
ISOLATION
HUMAN
DILEMMA
NATURE
INDIVIDUALISATION
PRODUCTIVE
ORIENTATION
ESCAPE FROM
FREEDOM
1. Authoritarianism
2. Destructiveness
3. Automation
conformity
UNPRODUCTIVE
ORIENTATION

49. FREUD FROMM
Personality governed by
un-modifiable biological factors
49
Personality governed by
reaction to human dilemma of
isolation

50. 50 Alfred Adler
1. Biography
2. Individual Psychology
Basic Tenets
Components of Theory

51. Biography
Born in Vienna 07 Feb 1870
Age 4 – close to death from pneumonia
 Decided to take up medicine as profession
Suffered from Rickets – began walking at age 5
 Brother Sigmund Adler served as a competitor
Pampered by mother till age of 2 yrs → Dethroned by birth of
younger brother
 ?? Rejection at hands of mother
 Father’s favourite child
 Rejection of Oedipal Complex
51

52. Biography
 Began as Opthalmologist → General Practitioner
 Opp Prater – combination amusement park and circus
 1907 invited to join Freud’s discussion group (Wednesday
Psychological Society)
 President of Vienna Psychoanalytic Society
 Freud disapproved of value assigned to aggression instinct
 Oct 1911 Adler Resigned → Society for Free Psychoanalytic Study → Society for
Individual Psychology
 Served in Austrian Army on Russian front + Children’s hospital
 Thoughts turned towards social interest
52

53. Tenets of Individual Psychology
53
1. The one dynamic force behind people’s behaviour is
the striving for success or superiority
2. People’s subjective perceptions shape their
behaviour and personality
3. Personality is unified and self-consistent
4. The value of all human activity must be seen from the
viewpoint of social interest
5. The self-consistent personality structure develops
into a person’s style of life
6. Style of life is moulded by people’s creative power

54. Striving for Success/Superiority
Basic Feelings of Inferiority or inadequacy
 Organ inferiority
 Social Disabilities
 Psychological Disabilities
54
Striving for Success
/ Superiority (Normal
feelings of incompletion)
Inferiority Complex Superiority Complex
• Indl grows,
progresses and
develops from the
attempt to overcome
the inferiority
• Inferiority may be
real or imagined
1. Failed efforts to
overcome organ
inferiority
2. Spoiling/Pampering
3. Neglect
• Overcompensation
for feelings of
inferiority
• Imp: So little self-acceptance
that
he/she can feel
important only by
putting others down

55. Striving for Success
Aggression → Will to Power/ “Masculine Protest”
Striving for success
 “a great upward drive without which life would be unthinkable”
Innate and Universal
 “if this striving were not innate to the organism, no form of life could preserve itself”
Existed as potentiality and needed to be properly developed
 Actualisation begins at 5th year when child develops a life-goal
 Calls for considerable expenditure of energy + effort
Occurs both at indl and societal levels
May take either negative or positive directions
 Personal Superiority
 Unselfish Goals
55

56. Final Goal
 Final goal is of either
 Personal Superiority
 Success for all humankind
 Each person has creative power to make a personalised fictional goal from
 Heredity
 Environment
 Power to set final goal developed at 4-5 years of age
 Unconscious/Conscious
Fictionalism
 The manner in which people strive to compensate is shaped
 Not by reality
 By subjective perceptions / fictions – ideas that have no real existence yet influence
people as if they really existed
 E.g. “Men are superior to women” “God rewards the good and punishes evil”
56

57. 57
Innate Striving Force
Physical /Social /
Personal Deficiencies
Feelings of Inferiority
Final goal
dimly
perceived
Personal Gain
/Superiority
Exaggerated
feelings of
incompletion
Final goal
clearly
perceived
success of
humankind
Normal
feelings of
incompletion

58. Unity and Self-consistency of Personality
 Each person is unique and indivisible
 Inconsistent behaviour does not exist
 All feelings, thoughts , actions are directed towards a single goal and serve a single
purpose
 Erratic behaviour when viewed from perspective of final goal will be unconsciously
serving larger purpose
1. Organ dialect
 “the body’s organs speak a language which is more expressive and discloses the
indl’s opinions more clearly than words are able to do” (Adler, 1956)
 E.g. deformity of RA – hands speak of desire for sympathy
 Bedwetting – resistance to obeying parental wishes
2. Harmony between Conscious and Unconscious actions
 Co-operating parts of the same unified goal system
 Conscious – understood and regarded as helpful
 Unconscious – not understood, not regarded as helpful (but helpful nonetheless)
58

59. Social Interest
 Gemeinschafttsgefuhl – Community feeling / sense of solidarity
 “Social interest means striving for a form of community…as it could be
thought of if mankind had reached the goal of perfection. It is never a
present-day community or society, nor a political or religious form. Rather the
goal….would have to be a goal which signifies the ideal community of all
humanity, the ultimate fulfilment of evolution” Adler, 1964
 Rooted as innate potentiality in everyone
 Needs to be developed before contributing to useful style of life
 “Social interest is a “Barometer of Normality”
59
Normal Healthy Person Maladjusted / Psychologically
unhealthy
• Normal feelings of incompleteness
• High levels of social interest
• Exaggerated feelings of inadequacy
• Low social interest

60. Role of Mother in Developing
Social Interest
Positive
Behaviour
Effect Negative
Behaviour
Effect
• Have genuine
deep-rooted
love for child
and not based
on vanity of
mother
• Develop true
caring for child,
husband and
others
Broadening of
child’s social
interest
Favours Child Child grows up
pampered and
spoilt
Favours Husband Child grows up
neglected

61. Role of Father in Developing
Social Interest 61
Positive
Behaviour
Effect Negative
Behaviour
Effect
• Demonstrate
caring attitudes
towards wife
and others
• Co-operate on
equal footing in
childrearing
Broadening of
child’s social
interest
Emotional
detachment
• Feeling of
Neglect
• ? Parasitic
attachment to
mother
• Creates a goal
of
compensatory
personal
superiority
Authoritarianism • Child learns to
strive for power
and personal
superiority

62. Style of Life
 “The unique pattern of traits, behaviours and habits which when taken
together define the route an indl has charted to reach a life-goal”
 It is a product of
 Heredity
 Environment
 Creative Power
INFERIORITY Behaviour to COMPENSATE
STYLE OF LIFE
Environ
Experience
Attitude towards /
interpretation of

63. Parameter Ruling Type Getting Type Avoiding
Type
Socially
Useful Type
Social Interest Very Low Low Very Low High
Degree of
Activity
High Low Lowest High
Description • Assertive,
aggressive
• Active in an
antisocial
manner
• “Parasitic”
relationship
with others
• Not esp
dangerous
due to low
activity
• Fear failure
more than
desire
success
• Sidestep
life’s
problems
See major
tasks of life
• Occupation
• Friendship
• Love
as social
problems

64. 64
FIRST BORN-CHILD
Positive Traits Negative Traits
Nurturing and Protective of others
Good Organiser
Highly anxious
Exaggerated Feeling of Power
Unconscious Hostility
Must always be “right”, others are always
“wrong”
SECOND BORN-CHILD
Positive Traits Negative Traits
Highly motivated
Co-operative
Highly competitive
Easily discouraged

65. 65
YOUNGEST CHILD
Positive Traits Negative Traits
Realistically Ambitious Pampered style of life
Dependent on others
Wants to excel at everything
Unrealistically ambitious
ONLY CHILD
Positive Traits Negative Traits
Socially Mature Exaggerated feelings of superiority
Low feelings of co-operation
Inflated Sense of Self
Pampered style of life

66. Strong Moderate Slight Midrange Slight Moderate Strong
Freedom Determinism
Rationality Irrationality
Holism Elementalism
Constitutionalism Environmentalism
Changeability Unchangability
Subjectivity Objectivity
Proactivity Reactivity
Homeostasis Heterostasis
Knowability Unknowability

67. 67
FREUD ADLER
Personality governed by
un-modifiable biological factors
Personality governed by
feelings of inferiority
Indl driven by unconscious
instincts
Indl driven towards fictional /
real goals
Conflicts of childhood
determine disposition
Birth order instrumental in
determining disposition

68. 68
“I made a pygmy great”
Freud, 1940
“A pygmy standing on the shoulders
of a giant can see farther than the
giant can” Adler
“That may be true of a pygmy,
but not of a louse in the giant’s
hair”

69. 69 Carl Jung
1. Biography
2. Structure of Personality
3. Dynamics of Personality

70. Biography
70
Born in 1875 in Switzerland
 Occult background on mothers side, admitted to mental asylum
 Identified separate personalities early on in his life (#1 & #2)
 Jung earned his M.D. degree in 1900 & went on to study
schizophrenia, consciousness, & hypnosis.
He was influenced by Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard von
Krafft-Ebing, professor in Vienna
 Joined under Eugen Bleuler in Burghölzli
Burghölzli is the psychiatric hospital of the University of Zürich,
Switzerland.
 Famous people associated with Burghölzli : Eugene Blueler, CG Jung,
Adolf Meyer, Ludwig Binswanger

71. 71
Ego Structure of Personality
Personal Unconscious
 Complexes
Collective Unconscious
 Archetypes
 Persona
 Anima/Animus
 Shadow
 Attitudes
 Introversion
 Extraversion
Functions
 Thinking
 Feeling
 Sensing
 Intuiting
Self

72. Structure of Personality
Ego
 Conscious mind
 Conscious perceptions, memories,
thoughts, feelings
 Responsible for feeling of identity and
continuity
Personal Unconscious
 Experiences that were once conscious
but have been suppressed, repressed,
forgotten, too weak to make a
conscious impression
 Complex – organised group or
constellation of feelings, thoughts,
perceptions and memories
72

73. Collective Unconscious
 Storehouse of latent memory traces inherited
from one’s ancestral past
 Includes pre-human animal ancestry
 All humans have same collective
unconscious
 Similarity in brain structure due to similar
evolution
 The possibility of reviving experiences of
past generations are inherited
 Predispositions are projected on the world
 E.g. infant is born with predisposition to react
to mother
 To manifest, predispositions require
strengthening by specific experiences
 Contents c/a Archetypes
73

74. Archetypes
 A Universal thought form (idea)
 With large emotional tone
 That creates images / visions which correspond in normal waking life to some
aspect of the conscious situation
 Image is usually compatible as archetype is product of experiences of the
human race with the world
 Origin = permanent deposit of an experience which has been repeated for
many generations
 Archetype may be the nucleus of a complex
 Will draw experiences towards it
 Can thereby penetrate into consciousness
 Examples : birth, rebirth, death, power, magic, unity, hero etc
74

75. 75 Archetypes
Persona
• Mask adopted by person in response to
• Demands of social convention
• Own inner Archetypal needs
• Purpose – to make a definitive
impression upon others
• If ego identifies with persona
• Indl “inflates the persona”
• Origin – social interactions in which
assumption of social role has been
beneficial

76. Archetypes
Anima & Animus
 Anima = Feminine Archetype in Male
 Animus = Masculine Archetype in Female
• Origin – racial experiences of man with woman and woman with man
• Purpose – act as collective images to motivate each sex to respond to and
understand members of opposite sex
• Discord possible if Archetype is projected without regard for real character of
partner
 Shadow
 Animal instincts
 Qualities we do not wish to acknowledge & hide from ourselves +
others
 Projected outwards becomes devil / enemy
 Facing the shadow – first test of courage
76

77. 77
Archetypes
The Self
 Archetype manifesting innate
human striving for unity, perfection
and completion
 Mid-point of personality
 Holds all other systems together
and provides equilibrium and
stability
 When center of personality
migrates from ego to “focal point
between conscious and
unconscious” (self) personality
gets a “new and solid foundation”
 Prerequisite is development of
various components of personality
to be fully developed and
individuated
 Usually self becomes evident in
middle age

78. Psychological Types – Attitudes & Functions
 Attitudes
 Introversion – turning inward of psychic energy with orientation towards
subjective
 Extroversion – turning outward of psychic energy with orientation towards
objective (2)
 Psychological Functions
 Superior function – highly differentiated (4)
 Inferior function – least differentiated (other member of pair)
 Auxillary function – one of the other pair (2)
78
Thinking Comprehending the nature of the world and
oneself
Rational
Feeling Assigning value to things Rational
Sensing Perceptual / reality function to gain concrete facts /
representations of the world
Irrational
Intuition Perception by way of unconscious processes and
subliminal content
Irrational

79. Psychic Energy
 “The energy by which the work of the personality is performed”
 Originates from the metabolic processes of the body
 c/a libido
 Finds expression in
79
 Actual forces – wishing, willing, feeling, attending, striving
 Potential forces – Dispositions, aptitudes, tendencies, inclinations, attitudes
 Follows principles of
 Equivalence – Energy expended to bring about a condition will appear elsewhere in
the system
 Entropy – Distribution of psychic energy seeks an equilibrium or balance (final Self)
 Use of Psychic energy
 Performing work necessary to maintain life and propagate species
 Instinctual functions
 Excess diverted to cultural and spiritual activities (highly developed purposes of life)

80. Stages of Development
80
Childhood Young Adulthood Middle Age
• Behaviour governed
by parental demands
• Sexuality emerges
• Child becomes
differentiated from
parents
• Extraversion is
primary attitude
• Consciousness
dominates mental life
• Need for meaning
• Change from
Extraverted to
Introverted attitude

81. Dreams & Interpretation
81
 Dreams “compensable for aspects of a dreamer’s personality
which have been neglected in waking life”
 Big dreams – archetypal imagery
 Little dreams – related to dreamer’s conscious preoccupations
 Amplification of dreams
 To explicate elements of rich symbolic significance
 Dreamer gives multiple associations and stands by dream element
 Responses form a constellation around dream element
 Constitute many-faceted meanings of dream element for dreamer
 Dream series
 Interpretation of a series of dreams
 “Dreams form a coherent series in the course of which the meaning
gradually unfolds of its own accord”

82. 82
FREUD JUNG
Personality governed by
un-modifiable biological factors
Personality governed by
cultural and racial influences
Single unconscious Personal and Collective
Unconscious
General negative view of
human condition
Humans had positive and
negative aspects both

83. REFERENCES
83
 Hjelle LA, Zeigler DJ (1985) Personality Theories: Basic
Assumptions, Research and Applications McGraw-Hill
 Theories of Personality Halle and Lindzey
 Boeree CG (1997) Harry Stack Sullivan Personality Theories,
Shippensburg University
 Gold SN, Bacigalupe G (1998) Interpersonal and Systematic
Theories of Personality
 Adler: Individual Psychology in Psychodynamic Theories

84. REFERENCES
84
 Hjelle LA, Zeigler DJ (1985) Personality Theories: Basic
Assumptions, Research and Applications McGraw-Hill
 Patterson RH (2008) The Neopsychoanalytic Approach, Ch 4
Karen Horney: Neurotic Needs and Trends 159-180
 Gilman SL (2001) Karen Horney MD 1885-1952. American
Journal of Psychiatry, 158, 1205
 Boeree CG (1997) Karen Horney Personality Theories,
Shippensburg University

85. THANK YOU
85