ck: Problems tend to amass when the belief systems
cohabit and contradict, as in
your example of the ideal vs. real self.
Confronting that obvious
discrepancy would cause disequilibrium, to a
degree. Depends on the person's
defenses, and the weight of that discrepancy
(incongruity) to a person's
total self-concept.
The neurotic conflicts Horney describes involve
deeper levels of conflicted personal identity (or
total self-concept as you call it). The world is
always showing us our Real Self, because the Other
can always be smarter, more talented, happier,
stronger, etc. Our own failings and ignorance in
relation to that world always shows us our Real
Self too.
Horney identifies three basic neurotic strategies
for dealing with the world or the Other, which she
links in Freudian fashion to the genesis of
neurosis. The short version is that she outlines
strategies involving (1) moving toward people, (2)
moving away from (or against) people, and (3)
hiding from people.
Her use of Gauguin is an interesting example of
the psychic depth of the conflicts she describes.
Gauguin, she says, was a (2). He had a need to
feel superior to those around him, or at the least
to feel unchallenged by them. Gauguin's Ideal Self
was of the supreme artist and great master thinker.
When he was around other people, or equal or
better artists (such as van Gogh), there was a
clash between Gauguin's Ideal Self and Gauguin's
Real Self (just another guy, just another
painter). That, she maintains, is why Gauguin fled
to Tahiti, abandoning his wife and children. On
Tahiti, nobody would challenge Gauguin's Ideal
Self. He could be The Master. He could be the
Great Painter on an island where few people except
the colonial officials spoke French.
So the painter who never paints and consistently
makes life choices that undermine his or her
painting, all the while imagining that he or she
is a Great Painter thwarted by Wal-Mart is
engaging in a strategy to prop up the Ideal Self
against the Real Self. The painter's Real Self is
the one who wanted a family, could not get up two
hours early to paint before work, imagines
greatness without sacrifice or hard work, and
looked to the environment rather than to his own
habits for excuses and blame.
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