German psychoanalyst Karen Horney, through her clinical experience and research with numerous patients, discovered that mental illness (neurosis/neurosis) stems from unfavorable upbringing environments during childhood. Children raised in such problematic environments develop persistent, deep anxiety and tension (basic anxiety). To escape this anxiety, they create an ideal image of themselves, tailored to their environment and personality, and strive to reach this ideal, thereby seeking confidence and security. They create numerous internal commands, such as “I should be liked by others” or, conversely, “I should remain detached even if I am not liked by others,” and try to bring themselves closer to this ideal.
As a result, their innate humanity (true self) does not develop healthily; instead, they develop an unhealthy mental and personality structure, fragmented between deep anxiety and confusion and the ideal self-image created to mask it. When this ideal self-image is not achieved, and the individual is subjected to intense stress, hidden fundamental anxieties and other issues come to the forefront, leading to the development of various mental illnesses and life disorders (generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, sleep disorders, eating disorders, addiction, social withdrawal, self-neglect, adjustment disorder, etc.).
In this way, individuals with mental illnesses who are trapped by the “shoulds” of their ideal self may also hold distorted and unrealistic attitudes and perceptions regarding their unhappy childhood experiences. The following is a quote from Chapter 3, “The Tyranny of ‘Shoulds’,” of Horney’s renowned work, “Neurosis and Human Development.”
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…… This trend is most apparent in the application of demands directed toward the past. Concerning the neurotic’s childhood, it is not only important to elucidate the influences which set his neurosis going, but also to recognize his present attitudes toward the adversities of the past. These are determined less by the good or the bad done to him than by his present needs. If he has developed, for instance, a general need to be all sweetness and light, he will spread a golden haze over his childhood. If he has forced his feelings into a strait jacket, he may feel that he does love his parents because he should love them. If he generally refuses to assume responsibility for his life, he may put all the blame for all his difficulties on his parents. The vindictiveness accompanying this latter attitude, in turn, may be out in the open or repressed.
He may finally go to the opposite extreme, and seemingly assume an absurd amount of responsibility for himself. In this case he may have become aware of the full impact of intimidating and cramping early influences. His conscious attitude is quite objective and plausible. He may point out, for instance, that his parents could not help behaving the way they did. The patient sometimes wonders himself why he does not feel any resentment. One of the reasons for the absence of conscious resentment is a retrospective should that interests us here. Though he is aware that what has been perpetrated on him was quite sufficient to crush anybody else, he should have come out of it unscathed. He should have had the inner strength and fortitude not to let these factors affect him. So, since they did, it proved that he was no good from the beginning. In other words, he is realistic up to a point; he would say: “Sure, that was a cesspool of hypocrisy and cruelty.” But then his vision becomes blurred: “Although I was helplessly exposed to this atmosphere, I should have come out of it like a lily out of a swamp.”
If he could assume a matter-of-fact responsibility for his life instead of such a spurious one, he would think differently. He would admit that the early influences could not fail to mold him in an unfavorable way. And he would see that, no matter what the origin of his difficulties, they do disturb his present and future life. For this reason he had better muster his energies to outgrow them. Instead, he leaves the whole matter at the completely fantastic and futile level of his demand that he should not have been affected. It is a sign of progress when the same patient at a later period reverses his position and rather gives himself credit for not having been entirely crushed by the early circumstances. ……
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I believe I’ve posted similar content before, but I’ve recreated it with more quotes.
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