Mike Harvey was born in 1989 in Palo Alto, California, the United States of America as the first sibling among three sons in the family. When he was five, Mike's father moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania leaving the family behind. Mike's mother was left to raise the three children on her own and without a stable job, the family went a night or two every fortnight without dinner. By the time he was ten years of age, his father had returned to Palo Alto and continuously battered his mother, a situation that led Mike to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which took most of the joy of his childhood. His primary defense in the problem was to walk away from home to his aunt who lived in downtown San Francisco until the bad feelings subsided. Mike joined a local high school in Palo Alto with the hopes of finding solace in the books in a bid to escape the suffering at home. Schooling was particularly hard for mike and his brothers who continuously suffered from extreme social anxiety. By the time he was eighteen, mike had contemplated suicide on the famous golden gate bridge in San Francisco twice and failed. Mike's mother sought a low-cost therapy program to see her son recover from PTSD and anxiety. More often than not, mike was affected by the feelings of insignificance in the society, which made him develop the inferiority complex. In high school, mike contested to be a leader twice and lost in the first time. He viewed himself as a failure until he took therapy seriously. The second time he won the elections in his school, a move that saw his grades improve to land him to a good college where he studied business management. When he was 25, Mike's father divorced his mother and a year later, Mike surprised his mother with a new mansion he bought for her in hidden hills, California. He enrolled his younger brothers to Harvard University to pursue medicine and law respectively after buying his mother the house. That was evidence of change in Mike's life to the better.
Similarities of the Horney and Adler's Personality Theories
Horney and Adler focus on the behavior and personality of human beings from similar yet different perspectives. The first similarity shared by the two methods is that both psychologists believe that human beings are born with a defined personality, which is shaped by the factors present in their world as they grow. Mike had a defined personality by the time he was born, and it was propelled by the circumstances they went through at home while he was growing up in the broken family. Horney believes that while the envy of the womb among men is observed to increase as they approach adulthood and observe the reproductive processes of the women, their devaluation of the women is a state that they are instead born with and develops more over time. It is possible that the devaluation of Mike's mother by his mother is a trait he developed out of the envy of the womb and the fruitfulness of his mother or the other women he had encountered in his life before. Adler holds that the inferiority feelings, as part of the factors that contribute to the personality of the human beings, is an example of the complexes that the human beings are born with and overcome them with time as they grow and interact with the other human beings. Mike had his share of the inferiority complex that he struggled to overcome as he grew up to the point of desiring to become a leader to gain the feeling of being superior. Thus, both Adler and Horney believe that human beings are born with particular traits that define their personality and they grow with them over time.
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Another similarity found in the personality theories presented by both Adler and Horney is that both psychologists believe that human beings have different personalities that are determined by particular traits, which indicate distinctions as well. From the arguments presented by Horney regarding how the various human beings respond to the world, she identifies three classes of people based on their reaction to the world: those who walk away from other people, those who walk against other people, and those that walk with the other people. The traits of the people who showcase the personality mentioned above brackets are different. While the rest of the family was left behind and withstood the trouble that Mike's father brought upon the family, mike often left without permission to his aunt's in downtown San Francisco. That indicates the difference he had in personality with the rest of his family. On the arguments presented by Adler, the difference between human beings based on their personality majorly occurs in some people being able to overcome the inferiority complex and assume the superiority complex while some of the people are unable to escape the inferiority complex and with time, they are demotivated to become superior. The inferiority complex that mike suffered from subsided as he began taking therapy seriously and was able to see more to life than just putting up with the hard life that his father brought the family. After being able to overcome PTSD and social anxiety, mike was able to stand with the family financially.
Another similarity of the personality theories presented by both Adler and Horney is their disagreement with Freud's personality theories. Although both Adler and Horney appear to agree with Freud in the initial developments of their personality theories, the later disagree with his ideologies. In the case of Horney, she critiques the emphasis on the penis presented by Freud to justify the formation of the personality and the difference between the male and female views of their personality and behavior (Allen, 2015). Karen Horney often disagreed with the work of Freud and especially regarding his view on women, which necessitated her to leave the New York Psychoanalytic Institute to form her American Institute for Psychoanalysis (Schultz & Schultz, 2016). In the case of Adler, he criticized Freud's personality theory because Freud majorly centered on the primary drive of human behavior being sex (Allen, 2015). Adler initially followed the Freud's psychological teachings before he finally disagreed with the approach on the grounds of Freud emphasizing that the drive of human behavior was centered on sex. However, both Adler's and Freud's theories on human behavior are similar only that Freud's focuses on the drive of human behavior as sex while Adler's focuses on the drive to human behavior as the need to reduce and finally overcome the inferiority feelings (Lundin, 2015). Therefore, both Adler and Horney were initially in favor of Freud's personality theory and disagreed with him after a series of critiques on the development and presentation of personality in the case of the human beings according to the Freud's model. Freud's model does not apply to the case of mike Harvey and his family members.
Differences between the Horney and Adler's Personality Theories
Alfred Adler and Karen Horney appear to be very similar but be very different neo-analytic theorists. Horney develops a structurally different approach to the personality model from that of Adler. Horney develops the psychodynamic theory, which she discusses the emphasis of the importance of the unconscious part of the human mind and how it affects the temperaments, behaviors and the personalities of the various individuals in a given society. In the light of mike's case study given above, the unconscious mind led him to believe from a very tender age that life was meaningless and there was no point in trying to be alive which led him to attempt suicide. As her most considerable contribution to the psychodynamic theory under the personality approach that she developed, Horney developed another model of neurosis. Neuroses are referred to as any kinds of mental disorders that are associated with anxiety. Horney explained that neurosis comes as a result of the underlying anxiety that human beings face at different instances in life. According to more in-depth explanations provided by Horney, basic anxiety is described as the general feeling of helplessness and isolation that occur within the world and affect different human beings. Horney also holds that basic anxiety is also because of the childhood experiences that the various individuals go through and the relationships they form with their parents and guardians and the rest of the family, friends, and the general people from a point when they are very young. The case of mike Harvey can be used to understand further the issue of neurosis and how basic anxiety plays the role of shaping the behaviors of the individuals. The anxiety he had growing up affected him adversely, which severed his relationship with his family and especially his father. Karen Horney came up with the hypothesis stating that the male species, regarding human beings, are often envious of the issue of pregnancy, breasts, motherhood, and suckling.
According to Horney, the envy of the womb led to the problem of most men devaluing the woman in societies across the globe (Schultz & Schultz, 2016). The devaluation of the women by the men, as explained by Horney's approach, can be seen in the way mike's father disregards his mother and leaves her alone to raise the family only to come back when they are grown. The drive to satisfaction among men has been seen through the way they treat the women in their lives, according to Horney's personality theory. Adler has a different approach to the development of personality and behaviors. Adler explains his argument further by affirming that human beings are born with inferiority as a feeling and leads them to believe that they cannot do anything on their own, which leads them to grow up being mostly dependent on their parents and guardians. The same case was viewed from the life of mike as he struggled with the feelings of being inferior in the society and his motive to become a leader in high school, which would be viewed as a move towards his escape from inferiority to superiority.
On the other hand, Adler approached the personality theory from a different perspective from that of Horney. Adler explains that human beings are regarded as social creatures and they develop their personalities from the interactions with the other people as well as individually. Applying Adler's perspective in the life of mike, his personality was contributed to by his individual beliefs and at the same time from the interactions with his family members, therapist and his school. That is different from the belief of Horney that human beings are overly dependent on the other people that they can form relationships with to develop their personality. Adler's psychodynamic approach differs from that of Horney in that the former explores the issue of the inferiority complex and how the human beings react to it while the latter focuses on the neurotic needs of the human beings in the society and how the various individuals react to them. From Adler's perspective, a powerful unconscious force shapes human beings’ social interaction from the moment they are born. In that case, it is arguable that mike was born with the issues of anxiety, which exacerbated as he was exposed to the outside world and he later developed PTSD. The results of the unconscious force are manifested in the desire of the human beings to strive for superiority and overcome the various flaws that they have in life, which translates to their desire to overcome the feelings of inferiority and avoid the inferiority complex that may reduce their self-esteem. The desire to overcome the inferiority and increase his self-esteem pushed mike towards contesting for leadership at school, a position that would have him feeling superior.
References
Allen, B. P. (2015). Personality Theories: Development, Growth, and Diversity . Psychology Press.
Lundin, R. W. (2015). Alfred Adler's Basic Concepts and Implications . Routledge.
Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2016). Theories of Personality . Cengage Learning.
