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Karen Horney Meets the Enneagram

Issue of where Karen fits in

complemented the traditional psychoanalytic biological orientation with an emphasis on culture and interpersonal relationships.

Horney thought that

basic anxiety brought about by insecurities in childhood were more fundamental in character

development than conflicts between instincts and society or intrapsychic conflicts among the id,

ego, and superego. Children develop ways of coping along three dimensions: a child can move

toward people (compliance), against them (aggression), or away from them (withdrawal). And

conflicts, dear to the hearts of all psychoanalytic practitioners, can arise among these three

tendencies.

Horney writes about these three interpersonal trends in two of her books: Our Inner Conflicts

(1945) and Neurosis and Human Growth (1950).

All three trends are available to us and healthy persons are able to move in any of these

directions when needed. What usually happens, though, is that we become comfortable and used

to one of the trends and so the other two become less accessible.

AUTHORS

Wagner

Claudio Naranjo was the first to synthesise Karen Horney's theory and the enneagram (Maitri, 2001).  Other enneagram authors have since drawn on Karen Horney to illustrate the character traits of the nine enneagram personality types.  They have especially used her three trends of moving towards, away and against people to show how the nine enneagram types can also be arranged into three groups of three.  However, not all authors agree on the exact arrangement and each author has emphasised different aspects of the two theories to form their categories (Wagner, 2001). 

In an article “Karen Horney meets the Enneagram” Wagner (2001) shows how various authors correlate the enneagram with Karen Horney's interpersonal trends.  Jerome Wagner, Tad Dunne, Maria Beesing, Bob Nogosek, and Pat O'Leary and Thomas Chou all accept that enneagram types 2, 6, 7 correlate with Horney' compliant type, 1,3, 8 correlate with Horney's aggressive type and that 4, 5, 9 correlate with Horney's withdrawn type.  Thomas Chou suggests however, that at a deeper level the types use different tactics to achieve their goals.  At this deeper level 2, 5, 8 are aggressive, 7, 4, 1 are withdrawn and 3, 6, 9 are compliant.

In contrast, Riso and Hudson, two very influential enneagram authors, divide the nine enneagram types into triads, thinking, feeling and instinctive.  In terms of this model, enneagram type 1 is a compliant type and enneagram type 7 is an aggressive type (Riso & Hudson 1999).  Kathy Hurley and Ted Donson agree with Riso and Hudson's structure but their defining categories are based on either expansive, enlightened or temperate solutions to life's problems.  In their understanding an expansive solution is due to the supression of the emotional center which results in aggresion, the enlightened solution is due to the supression of the instinctive center which results in withdrawel and isolation and the temperate solution is due to the supression of the mental center which results in compliance (Fauvre, …..)

Lastly, Janet Levine groups the nine enneagram types according to the three centers; body, mental and emotional.  Therefore, 8, 9, 1 are aggressive, 2, 3, 4 are compliant and 5, 6, 7 are withdrawn.

Trevor

Hjertaas (2009) synthesises Horney's construct of basic anxiety with Alfred Adders's theory of Individual Psychology to further understand social anxiety.  He agrees with Horney that an upbringing that is overly harsh, emotionally barren or stiflingly controlled results in a fear of not belonging.  This fear in turn exasperates social anxiety and must be taken onto account when treating a person suffering from social anxiety. 

Wendy

Smith (2006) points out the contemporary relevance of Karen Horney's ideas by showing their compatibility with attachment theory and self-psychology.  She highlights Horney's understanding of the impact of the environment and culture on development and notes Horney's contribution to feminine psychology. 

Agnus

Between 1922 and 1939 Horney reacted against the androcentric understanding of women and “objected to the development of a psychology of women based on an analogy to the psychology of men” (O'Connell, 1980, p.85).

People rely on all there trends to successfully negotiate interpersonal relationships.  At times a person may need to be assertive and go against another  person. A period of reflection and withdrawal may be more appropriate at other times.  Still at other times, being able to move towards people may be the best reaction.  A person that is not neurotic therefore, should be able to integrate all three trends and use them appropriately according to the situation.  WHAT ABOUT ENNEAGRAM TYPES – ARE ALL PEOPLE FUNDAMENTALY NEUROTIC?

Horney's ideas evolved from her difficult early childhood experiences, her clinical cases, and her own need for affection, approval and mastery (O'Connell, 1908, p89)

PLAGERISE

The “tyranny of the should” and secondary defences such as externalization, compartmentalization, and blind spots described by Horney (1950) have been widely adopted and incorporated in numerous theories of personality to the point where they have become folk wisdom, hackneyed, yet they are concepts rarely credited to Horney (O'Connell, 1908. 90)  katherine as well

Stephen and the boys+

Katherine

Her descriptions of the observable features in both the normal character and the pathological character are a common typology shared with the Enneagram typology. In particular the Hornevian models, Enneagrammatically known as the Hornevian Triads, potentially directly correspond and extend the insights into the more subtle aspects of the Enneagram.

In conclusion, correlating the Enneagram with the Horney models in regard to the centers, as well as the Riso triads and the Hurley and Dobson repressed center, as documented by the Chabreuils, is rich in data that can be interpreted on many levels. The addition of The Gurdjieff Work, in tandem with Palmer's work, gives body and breath to a personality typology that indeed is neither random nor arbitrary, but rather maintains a quality and elegance in its inherent symmetry.

This suggested correlation was documented and superbly explained by Fabien and Patricia Chabreuil. Their work combines the work of Horney, Don Richard Riso, and Kathy Hurley and Ted Dobson.

If in fact the Enneagram is truly elegant in its symmetry and not random or arbitrary, would not all the approaches to the centers seem equally valid and pertinent? And if the insights of Horney are equally respected for their time-tested typology, why not overlay these valuable insights and examine and synthesize the confluence within the diverse findings.

For example, if we synthesize Horney's work with the works of Gurdjieff and the Enneagram according to Palmer, Riso, and Hurley and Dobson, we might have the following interpretation:

An interesting synthesis of Horney' ideas and the different interpretations of Palmer, Riso, and Hurley and Dobson revealed that the enneagram can indeed

KAREN HORNEY – Self Analysis

Chapter Two

They represent a way of life enforced by unfavourable conditions.  The child must develop them in order to survive his insecurity, his fears, his lonliness.  But they give him an unconscious feeling that he must stick to the established path at all odds, lest he succunb to the danger threatening him. (P.45)

Inflexible, all-pervasive nature of the neurotic trends. 

10 neurotic trends pg. 54 -60.