Horney's Theory And Its Practice Of Literature

The psychoanalysis is a very important criticism sect of twenty centuries west literarycriticism theories. It has made important devotions on both criticism practice and theorycontribution. Karen Horney was the pioneer and the main representative of sociocultural schoolof psychoanalysis. This article will try hard to carry on make an investigation about herpersonality theory, in order to attain the purpose of efficacious absorb and use for literarycriticism practice. Horney (and Adler and Fromm and Sullivan) formed an unofficial school of psychiatry.They are often called neo-Freudians, although that is rather inaccurate. Horney inherited someideologies, outlooks and methods of Freud's traditional psychoanalysis. Meanwhile shedeveloped it and formed her own sociocultural neurosis theory. Horney believed that themotive structure of neurosis was not biologic instinct but the basic anxiety, which originallycame from the contradiction of social culture and the dissonance of the interpersonal relation.In order to avoid the fear of helplessness and hostility and loneliness, the neurotic needs andcoping strategies emerge, as the times require. So people plunge into unconscious viciouscircle。Eventually much person fell into mental dissonance and conflict. The great significance of Horney's ideology is to analyze and understand the mentalconflict of the dramatis personae. We may break away the chain of character's children suffer,and describe their dominant coping strategies by current actions. In Horney's writings, shereferred to three strategies: compliance (moving-toward people), aggression (moving-againstpeople), and withdrawal (moving-away-from people). In this article, we select three texts (TheColor Purple, Le Père Goriot, Disgrace) to analyze the three personality coping strategies. Because the other coping strategies were oppressed by the dominant coping strategy, theneurotics self is "split" into an ideal self and a despised self. When individual is faced withfateful inner conflicts, he maybe vacillate between these two impossible selves, he maybe usesthe potential coping strategies. The example of Hamlet illustrates the inner conflicts ofdifferent coping strategies and different selves. So, we use Horney's theory to explain theendless deferment and frustrations in Hamlet's struggle to take revenge on the 'king'. In conclusion, we hope the research of Horney's theory can provide us a method ofunderstand of the western and Chinese literature.