Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realizations – The Marginalian

The measure of growth is not how much we have changed, but how harmoniously we have combined our changes with all that we have been – those human vessels piled up inside the present man like Russian dolls giving birth, not to grow but to be tenderly inserted. True growth is so difficult precisely because it requires becoming friends with the parts of ourselves that we have rejected or forgotten – what James Baldwin memorably called “the perishing and glory of knowing who and what you are”; it requires abandoning all the false people we have placed during life under the power of law and coercion; it takes living in peace with those we were with in order to live fully and be what we can be.

Those soft and often difficult foundations of true growth are what the German psychologist says Karen Horney (September 16, 1885–December 4, 1952) was examined in the last years of his life in his extraordinarily insightful book. Neurosis and Human Development: The Struggle Towards Self-Identity (public library).

A generation before Joan Didion noted that “the actor—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source of self-respect,” Horney writes:

A person can grow, in the true sense, only if* he takes responsibility for himself.

Noting that a fulfilling and satisfying life requires “the relaxation and cultivation of the energies that lead to self-realization,” he considers the spring of that primary purpose in relation to growth:

You don't need to, and really can't, teach an acorn to grow into an oak tree, but when given the chance, its inner strength will grow. Similarly, a person, if given a chance, tends to develop some of his personality skills. He will then develop the unique living power of his true self: the clarity and depth of his feelings, thoughts, desires, interests; the ability to use his resources, his willpower; special abilities or gifts they may have; the ability to express oneself, and to communicate with others through one's spontaneous feelings. All this in time will help him to find a set of principles and his goals in life. In short, you will grow, more consistently, in self-awareness.

Growth is possible only when the person reflected is the self – “the real person as that central inner force, common to all people and yet unique to each person, which is the deepest source of growth.” And yet it can be strangely difficult to see that real person under the proper disguise, under the armor worn when facing the truth, under all the people who have learned during the time of adaptation to the world's demands and attacks. EE Cummings knew this when he realized that “to be nobody-but-yourself – in a world where you do your best, day and night, to make everyone else – means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight. From the moment we are born, we begin to change that real personality that is soft under the pressure of our emotional and physical environment – a process of adaptation that is also the beginning of the process of all our isolation, marked by the constant tyranny of what we should live – our parents, our culture, our own. Horney looks at the path to liberation and his behavior:

All forms of pressure can easily divert our constructive energies into unconstructive or destructive channels. But… we don't need an inner jacket to bind our creativity, or an inner whip to guide us to perfection. There is no doubt that such disciplinary methods can be successful in suppressing undesirable traits, but there is also no doubt that they are detrimental to our growth. We don't need them because we see a better opportunity to deal with the forces that destroy us: they actually are growing see. The path towards this goal is a continuous awareness and understanding of ourselves. Therefore, self-awareness is not an end in itself, but a way to unleash the power of spontaneous growth.

In this sense, self-service becomes not only the primary moral obligation, but at the same time, in the real sense, the primary morality. right. To the extent that we take our growth seriously, it will be because of our desire to do so. And as we lose our ego, as we become free to nurture ourselves, we also free ourselves from love and concern for other people.

Therefore, growth is not something we do for ourselves and only ourselves, but something we do for others and for others—a testament to the fact that human interaction is “the cause of normal human growth.” And yet we alone are responsible – to ourselves and to others – for making this plan and following it through. A century after Nietzsche pondered how to find himself, emphasizing that “no one can build a bridge for you, and you alone, over which you must cross the river of life,” Horney writes:

Only a person can improve their given abilities. But, like any other organism, the human individual needs the right conditions to grow “from an acacia to an oak”; he needs a warm atmosphere to give him both a sense of inner security and an inner freedom that allows him to have his own feelings and thoughts and express himself. He needs the good will of others, not only to help him in his many needs but to guide and encourage him to become a mature and satisfied person. You also need a healthy conflict with the wishes and desires of others. If he can grow like that with others, in love and conflict, will also grow in accordance with their true selves.

Neurosis and Human Development it is a revelation that is read as a whole. Complete this piece with poet, philosopher, and activist Edward Carpenter on love, pain, and growth and poet Robert Penn Warren on the paradox of “finding yourself,” and revisit philosopher Amélie Rorty's seven stages of self-reflection.