The Book “Our Inner Conflicts”

The book “Our Inner Conflicts,” by the German writer Mrs. Karen Horney, examines the kinds of neurotic aberration and their causes, and pictures for us, with living examples drawn from the heart of life, the complication and entanglement which social life in the present age has reached in the manifold avenues of living. It shows us the effect of these external factors on people's souls, and the inner conflict that arises from them — a conflict that often ends in a violent psychic neurosis, which later becomes a psychological deviation and an aberration in social relations.

The importance of “Our Inner Conflicts” rests, in the first place, on the author's distinguished standing in world scientific circles. Mrs. Karen Horney, German by origin, graduated as a physician in psychology from the University of Berlin in 1913, and from her marriage to Oskar Horney was blessed with three daughters... She then emigrated with her family to the United States and settled in New York, and since 1932 she has not ceased to lecture in social and psychological studies. She is now vice-president of the Psychoanalysis University and an active member of a number of organizations that aim at the advancement of modern psychology.

Karen Horney has a number of works, the most important of which are:

1. Neurotic Personality of Our Time
2. New Ways in Psychoanalysis
3. Self-Analysis
4. And finally, “Our Inner Conflicts,” which we are about to discuss, and which is rightly counted the cream of the knowledge she has attained in this virgin field, and of the valuable experience brought to her by the very practice of her medical profession.

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In searching out the causes of neurotic aberration, the author says:

It is not easy to trace the causes of neurotic aberration in people. But there are signs and indications apt to point to the aspects of this aberration, such as a person's departing from the ordinary in his behavior, and his falling prey to severe exhaustion at the least work he performs... And the firmer our knowledge of people and our close contact with them, and the wider our study of their psychologies and their behavior, the better this helps us to arrive, together with them, at the desired results.

Much of the activity of educators and psychologists at the present time is directed, in breadth and in depth, toward lifting the veil from the secrets of this science and reaching a solution of these psychological complexes and nervous conflicts that turn a man's nature upside down and make of him a fettered slave, led by their bonds without any will of his own. Freud, who traces every act a man performs back to a sexual factor, looks upon this problem with a pessimistic eye and sees little hope of its cure. But the author is more optimistic: she hopes for cure, so long as man is alive and continues to grow.

It is known that every strange phenomenon in a person's conduct has an antecedent, or antecedents, among events that exerted a direct or indirect influence in giving him this direction — a direction that may become aberrant, and take on, with the passage of time, one of three forms: moving toward people, moving against people, and fleeing from people.

And as the author comes to enumerate the cases of neurotic aberration common in this age, she lays stress on these three types, speaking in detail of their signs and their consequences, so as to make it easy for the reader to trace them and recognize them wherever they are found.

Among the traits of those who move toward people is that they feel their own weakness and helplessness and so seek strength from those who possess it. They submit before them, declaring their complete obedience, surrendering to the will of others — the strong among people,

or those who have counted themselves strong and so appeared in the guise of might and leadership, deservedly or undeservedly... These people court the affection of others, and they are forever in need of a word of encouragement; their utmost goal is success in finding a companion, be it a husband or a friend... They are extremely sensitive, agitated at the slightest gesture, their nervous system thrown into disorder — and that because they have little confidence in their capacities and in themselves. In short, the persons afflicted with this aberration do the impossible for the sake of people's approval of them, and to be repaid love for love and sacrifice for sacrifice.

It appears from the features of our present-day upbringing and our social systems, says the author, that this type of nervous aberration is more widespread among women than among men. And from this we can account for the behavior of certain women, their rushing into the service of others, and their expending the impossible to please them and win their sympathy.

Among the traits of the second category is that they are forever in a state of war and resistance; they are the exact opposite of the first category. They oppose for opposition's sake and nothing more; they fight every idea and resist every creed. Negative in all their behavior, inclined in the extreme to exploit people and to use them for their own interests, whether material or spiritual — as though a single question echoed always in the depths of their souls with regard to every friendship or connection they have with people: “How can I profit from this friendship?”

And the strange thing is that the person afflicted with this nervous aberration supposes that people — all people — act as he does, for their own interests alone, and measure the importance of things by the personal profit they draw from them... Love, for this category, is a secondary matter, a means to a material

or social standing that gratifies their pride and strengthens their position.

As for those of the third category, they turn away from people and the company of people, withdrawn into themselves, their habit solitude and the seeking of isolation... They surround themselves with a wall of illusions which no one whatsoever can penetrate. Hence their contact with the outside world comes only at the call of pressing necessity; and when this necessity does not exist, the iron wall is shut, and the sufferer remains in his loneliness and his isolation, content and by his own choice.

For this reason the people of this category absent themselves from public gatherings, and they show a great readiness to limit the varieties of their food and drink and to narrow their manner of living, so that the need of contact with people, and of seeking their help of whatever kind, may dwindle... The person afflicted with this aberration seeks isolation, and whoever tries to trouble this isolation for him is an intruder; and every question addressed to him about his private life stirs his fiercest anger. He is forever wrapped in a halo of secrets and locked doors.

And it is in the nature of this category that they are enamored of appearing in the guise of superiority, so they incline to everything contrary to what others do; they flee from love, for fear of what it might drag them into against their will of submission and obedience. They live in an atmosphere of emotional repression, taking care not to disclose to anyone the hidden contents of their souls so far as they can help it; and so their ties with people remain shrouded in obscurity and doubt.

It becomes clear to us from what the author says that the cases of nervous aberration which beset the people of this age are as complicated as the life we live; and the more numerous the causes apt to bear down upon a man and upset his natural nervous order, the more numerous the incidental happenings, and the more numerous the cases of aberration of which we are speaking.

And when the author comes to speak of how one may be rid of these aberrant nervous states, she says: “The cure of these symptoms does not rest upon a conscious mental resolve, nor upon exerting the sufferer's will in a given direction; there is but one way, and no second to it, and that is the removal of the primary causes that led to these states, and the erasing of their trace from the sufferer's personality.

“And it is not enough that a person concede and acknowledge the existence of these aberrant symptoms in his behavior and in his thinking; the important thing is that he cooperate with the physician in working to bring about a revolution in the very heart of his personality, resting on a special psychological regimen...” “And it is a mistake to think,” says the author, “that cure of these nervous symptoms comes only by way of psychological treatment; for often the sufferer is cured naturally, as a result of following the example of some great human model, or of his direct contact with a group of sincere people, or of his undergoing a common catastrophe that joins him to a company of the stricken like himself... Natural contingencies such as these are apt to remove the principal causes that produced this aberration, and consequently to erase its symptoms completely; and the sufferer returns happy, sound of nerve.”

And the author concludes by saying: the soundness of our nerves is measured by the social immunity we possess; the sounder and better balanced our relations with people, the further we are from falling prey to these diseases. The world community is large and wide, and it is not within the power of any one of us to live a natural life without dealing with the various classes and kinds of people; so it behooves this human being to take care that his social ties be built upon love and understanding, not upon deviation and extremism.

Karen Horney's book “Our Inner Conflicts” is a profound psychological study in one of the sciences newly arisen in this age, and it is counted in the front rank of the scientific works that have treated this subject in the light of psychoanalysis and scientific experiment. It is, moreover, the fruit of a long struggle in which the author sought to uncover the causes of the obscurity and the nervous aberration that is well-nigh one of the potent phenomena of the twentieth century.

I do not say that the book is easy and smooth in style, for it was not written for the general public, nor for innocent amusement, but for the cultivated class that cares to be acquainted with every new development in the sciences; and the reading of it throws light on much that is obscure in the understanding of people's natures and the causes of their aberrant conduct and their deviant behavior.