of the idealized self, in the successful assertion of claims, and in the “loftiness and severity” of the inner dictates. Since pride turns the compulsive behaviors of the various solutions into virtues, anything can be a source of pride. There is commonly a great pride in the mental processes of imagination, reason, and will, since “the infinite powers” we ascribe to ourselves “are, after all, powers of the mind.” The mind must work incessantly at “maintaining the private fictitious world through rationalizations, justifications, externalizations, reconciling irreconcilables—in short, through finding ways to make things appear different from what they are” (91–94).
Pride is a vitally important defense, but since it is based on illusion and self-deception, it increases our vulnerability. Threats to pride produce anxiety and hostility; its collapse results in self-contempt. We are especially subject to feelings of shame (when we violate our own pride) and humiliation (when our pride is violated by others). We react to shame with self-hate and to humiliation with a vindictive hostility ranging “from irritability, to anger, to a blind murderous rage” (Horney 1950, 99).
There are various devices for restoring pride. These include retaliation, which reestablishes the superiority of the humiliated person, and loss of interest in that which is threatening or damaging. They also include various forms of distortion, such as forgetting humiliating episodes, denying responsibility, blaming others, and embellishing. Sometimes “humor is used to take the sting out of an otherwise unbearable shame” (Horney 1950, 106). We also protect our pride by avoidances, such as not trying, restricting wishes and activities, and refusing to become involved in any serious pursuit or relationship.
Self-hate is usually the end product of the intrapsychic strategies of defense, each of which tends to magnify the individual’s feelings of inadequacy and failure. Self-hate is essentially the rage the idealized self feels toward the self we actually are for not being what it “should” be. Self-hate is in large part an unconscious process, since it is usually too painful to be confronted directly. The chief defense against awareness is externalization, which takes active and passive forms. Active externalization “is an attempt to direct self-hate outward, against life, fate, institutions or people.” In passive externalization “the hate remains directed against the self but is perceived or experienced as coming from the outside.” When self-hate is conscious, there is often a pride taken in it that serves to maintain self-glorification: “The very condemnation of imperfection confirms the godlike standards with which the person identifies himself” (Horney 1950, 114–15). Horney sees self-hate as “perhaps the greatest tragedy of the human mind. Man in reaching out for the Infinite and Absolute also starts destroying himself. When he makes a pact with the devil, who promises him glory, he has to go to hell—to the hell within himself” (154).
As we turn to look at literature from a Horneyan perspective, it is important to keep in mind that we shall find neither characters in books nor people in life who correspond exactly to Horney’s descriptions. Her types are composites, drawn from her experience with people who share certain dominant trends but who differ from each other in many important ways. The Horneyan typology helps us to see how certain traits and behaviors are related to each other within a psychological system, but once we have identified a person’s predominant solution, we must not assume the presence of all the characteristics Horney ascribes to that solution. It is also important to remember, as Horney observes, that “although people tending toward the same main solution have characteristic similarities, they may differ widely with regard to [their] level of human qualities, gifts, or achievements” (1950, 191). The situation is further complicated by the fact that people experience inner conflicts and display behaviors, traits, and beliefs that belong to more than one solution. Quoting William James to the effect that “‘most cases are mixed cases’” and that “‘we should not treat our classifications with too much respect,’” Horney concludes: “It would be more nearly correct to speak of directions of development than of types” (1950, 191).
If we forget these qualifications, we are liable to put people into categories instead of grasping their individuality, and our analysis will be little more than a reductive labeling. Horney allows for infinite variations and combinations of defenses and recognizes other components of the personality as well. In a brief description, her theory seems highly schematic, but when properly employed it is quite flexible.
3
A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler
The first person to look at literature from a Horneyan perspective was Karen Horney herself. She taught courses at the New School for Social Research that were focused on literary works, and she frequently used literature for illustrative purposes in her writings. An admirer of Henrik Ibsen, she cited his works more often than those of any other author. This is not surprising, for Ibsen is the greatest psychological dramatist next to Shakespeare, and there is a remarkable congruence between his plays and her theory. Many of Ibsen’s characters seem to have stepped from the pages of Our Inner Conflicts and Neurosis and Human Growth. I could easily devote a book to a Horneyan study of Ibsen, but I shall confine myself here to two of his most famous and enigmatic characters, Nora Helmer and Hedda Gabler. At the center of Ibsen’s plays, there is often a relationship, the psychodynamics of which are portrayed with remarkable subtlety. I shall analyze Nora’s relationship with her husband, Torvald, and Hedda’s with Ejlert Lövborg.
Although Horney initially devoted herself to the study of feminine psychology, she stopped writing on this topic in the mid-1930s and developed a theory that she regarded as gender-neutral. She did not see any defensive strategies as essentially masculine or feminine but felt that all were employed by members of both sexes. The greater incidence of self-effacement in women and aggression in men is a product, she felt, of culture. Horney’s position is borne out by the study of literature. Self-effacement is more common in female characters and aggression in males, but there are many aggressive women and self-effacing men.
One of the major objectives of women’s liberation movements has been to free women from the cultural demand for self-effacement and to establish their right to full human development. At the thematic level, this seems to be what A Doll’s House is about. In the first two acts of the play, Nora Helmer is a striking example of feminine compliance, while in the last act she rebels against her doll-like role and asserts her claim to full humanity.
Indeed, the most difficult thing to understand about Nora is the speed of her transformation from a submissive, self-sacrificing woman who lives only for love and family into a self-assertive person who rejects all responsibility to her husband and children in the name of her duty to herself. At the end Nora seems so different from her earlier self that some have felt that Ibsen sacrificed consistent characterization to his thematic concerns. Nora learns that she has been unjustly treated by a male-dominated society and that she must rebel against the conventional view of her nature if she is to realize herself. “You and Father have done me a great wrong,” she tells Torvald. “You’ve prevented me from becoming a real person” (act 3).1 She decides that she must leave home if she is to have a chance of discovering what she really thinks and who she really is. Nora’s speeches are stirring, but has Ibsen put words into her mouth that are inconsistent with her previously drawn character? Is her transformation psychologically plausible? How, exactly, does her disillusionment with Torvald produce her amazing turnabout? Can a woman who intended to drown herself near the beginning of the last act become as strong a person as Nora seems to be at the end?
I believe that Nora is a well-drawn mimetic character whose transformation is intelligible if we understand her defensive strategies and the nature of her relationship with her husband. She never becomes a mere mouthpiece but remains an inwardly motivated character, full of inconsistencies and blind spots that are psychologically realistic. Her transformation is plausible when we recognize that with the collapse of
