Karen Horney (1885-1952) was one of the first female psychoanalysts. Horney is German but has spent most of his career in the United States. The rise of the fascists (Nazism Party) caused large numbers of elites and geniuses to flee Germany and Austria. Usually the phenomenon of “brain drain” or “elite migration” is one of the consequences of the rise of fascist and totalitarian regimes.
The elites are intellectuals, but the fascists and totalitarians oppose free thought and say, you are free to think, provided that the result of your thought is not something outside the framework of “official reading” or “leading thought”!
It is natural that in such a system the free expression of ideas is a crime and the elites do not tolerate such an atmosphere. For this reason, after the rise of the Nazism Party, geniuses such as Sigmund Freud, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Fritz Perls, Albert Einstein, Jacob Moreno, Hannah Arendt, and Anna Freud left Germany and Austria, and those who remained (such as Carl Jaspers). And Viktor Frankl) suffered heavy pressure. I have already written in detail about the fascist and totalitarian systems, as well as about Arendt and Jaspers, and now I want to turn to some of Horney’s ideas.
Horney believes that every society has a “Pride System.” The system of pride is an ideal image that is the product of history, culture and political system, and people try to get closer to that ideal image in order to be proud of others. Horney’s “system of pride” may be likened to Anthony Gramsci’s “cultural hegemony,” as I discussed earlier in The Worshiped Inferior.
“The system of social pride alienates us from our original selves and causes us to move towards that idealized self instead of the real self,” says Karen Horney.
Why did I name this ideal self, “Marketing business”? Because it has a social role of market and buyer, and as you approach it, you increase your “Social Capital” and consequently your Economic Capital, and more opportunities to gain power, fame, wealth and popularity. You get it.
But Horney believes that if we do not move in the direction of discovering and realizing our true selves, the acquisition of this power and wealth and fame can not bring us “satisfaction” and we will be dissatisfied, tense and depressed at the highest rungs of the social victory ladder.
Whether or not Horney is right depends on whether you agree with “humanistic and existential psychology” (humanist and existential).
Dr. Mohammad Reza Sargolzaei – Psychiatrist
Translated By: Negar Kolkar
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