"Taking again as an example the need to appear perfect, I would be interested primarily in understanding what this trend accomplishes for the individual (eliminating conflicts with others and making him feel superior to others), and also what consequences the trend has on his character and his life. The latter investigation would make it possible to understand, for example, how such a person anxiously conforms with expectations and standards to the extent of becoming a mere automaton, and yet subversively defies them; how this double play results in listlessness and inertia; how he is proud of his apparent independence, yet actually is entirely dependent on the expectations and opinions of others; how he is terrified lest anyone should discover the flimsiness of his moral strivings and the duplicity which has pervaded his life; how this in turn has made him seclusive and hypersensitive to criticism."
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Women academics from the United StatesImmigrants to the United StatesPsychiatrists from the United StatesWomen academics from GermanyPeople from Hamburg
Original Language: English
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Sources
New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939) pp. 281
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karen_Horney
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Karen Horney
Karen Horney (16 September 1885 – 4 December 1952) was a German-born U.S. psychoanalyst.
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