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The feelings of insecurity that arise early in childhood where children perceive that they are unloved or undervalued
Introduction
Psychoanalyst Karen Horney described the concept of “basic anxiety” or “basic conflict” in her 1945 book, Our Inner Conflicts. She defined basic anxiety as the feelings that arise in a child from being unloved, unvalued, or insecure. She wrote:
[Basic anxiety] …the feeling a child has of being isolated and helpless in a potentially hostile world. A wide range of adverse factors in the environment can produce this insecurity in a child: direct or indirect domination, indifference, erratic behavior, lack of respect for the child’s individual needs, lack of real guidance, disparaging attitudes, too much admiration or the absence of it, lack of reliable warmth, having too much or too little responsibility, over protection, isolation from other children, injustice, discrimination, unkept promises, hostile atmosphere, and so on...
References
Coolidge, F. L. (2012). Horney-Coolidge tridimensional inventory: Manual. Department of Psychology, University of Colorado: Colorado Springs.
Coolidge, F. L., Moor, C. J., Yamazaki, T. G., Stewart, S. E., & Segal, D. L. (2001). On the relationship between Karen Horney’s tripartite theory and personality disorder features. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 1387–1400.
Coolidge, F. L., Segal, D. L., Benight, C. C., & Danielian, J. (2004). The predictive power of Horney’s psychoanalytic approach: An empirical study. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 64, 363–374.
Horney, K. (1945). Our inner conflicts. New York: W. W. Norton.
Horney, K. (1950). Neurosis and human growth. New York: W. W. Norton.
Paris, B. (1994). Karen Horney: A psychoanalyst’s search for self-understanding. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Coolidge, F.L., Matlock, S.E. (2018). Basic Anxiety (Horney). In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1363-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1363-1
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