Our Inner Conflicts.

Abstract

In this book, Dr. Horney continues the elaboration of her ideas of the nature and dynamics of the neurotic character structure, with their challenge to the orthodox, strictly freudian psychoanalytic concepts, which she elaborated in her previous works. This volume presents the thesis that "the conflict born of incompatible attitudes constitutes the core of neurosis and therefore deserves to be called basic.... It is the dynamic center from which neuroses emanate.... neuroses are an expression of a disturbance in human relationships." The various methods and technics which neurotic persons use to attempt to "solve" this basic conflict are then delineated, with Horney's usual lucidity of description and penetration of clinical observation. She classifies these neurotic mechanisms into the following general groups: moving toward people, moving against people, moving away from people, the idealized image and externalization. A vivid picture of neurotic hopelessness as the vault of unresolved conflicts is drawn