Karen Horney's Psychodynamic Approach

1.3 Ego
Ego is the second component to develop internally as the child interacts more and more with the environment within the next three years. It is rational, pragmatic, less primitive than the id and operates in the preconscious and the conscious mind. Freud considered it to be the ‘self’ and its job is to balance the demands of the Id and superego in the practical context of reality called the reality principle . Reality principle is the idea that the desires of the id must be satisfied in a method that is both socially appropriate and realistic; in other word, it negotiates between the id and the environment. Once experiences are processed through the superego and the id, they fall into the ego to mediate a satisfactory outcome. Because

To Horney, the development of personality is not about internal conflict with your id, ego and superego but it is about the relationship with others. Human needs should be met in childhood, if not, the child will develop basic hostility and basic anxiety;
Basic hostility – Arises when parents do not satisfy the child’s need for safety and satisfaction
Basic anxiety – repressed hostility that leads to feelings of insecurity and apprehension.

According to Horney, there are three ways that every individual use as a strategy to combat basic hostility and basic anxiety (Heffner, n.d.), but she emphasized more on people categorised as neurotic that usually take these strategies to the extreme level;
i) Moving toward people (compliance)
Those who face a great deal of anxiety and helplessness move toward people in order to seek help and acceptance and neurotics usually have an intense need to be accepted. ii) Moving against people (Aggression)
Forcing someone’s power into others in hopes of feeling good about yourself and therefore use this justification to “get them before they get