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Karen Horney's Three Conflicts - Which Type Are You? Etc.

Mal12345

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You children can stop laughing at the name in the thread title.

Psychologist Karen Horney wrote a book called "Our Inner Conflicts" in which she outlined and described three basic types of neurotic conflict resulting in personalities that are aggressive, compliant, or withdrawn:

Compliant: "When moving toward people he accepts his own helplessness, and in spite of his estrangement and fears tries to win the affection of others and to lean on them. Only in this way can he feel safe with them. If there are dissenting parties in the family, he will attach himself to the most powerful person or group. By complying with them, he gains a feeling of belonging and support which makes him feel less weak and less isolated."

Aggressive: "When he moves against people he accepts and takes for granted the hostility around him, and determines, consciously or unconsciously, to fight. He implicitly distrusts the feelings and intentions of others toward himself. He rebels in whatever ways are open to him. He wants to be the stronger and defeat them, partly for his own protection, partly for revenge."

Withdrawn: "When he moves away from people he wants neither to belong nor to fight, but keeps apart. He feels he has not much in common with them, they do not understand him anyhow. He builds up a world of his own— with nature, with his dolls, his books, his dreams."

Sometimes Karen's wording can be a bit strange. "His dolls"? I'm the withdrawn type and I can assure you I don't play with dolls. Never did. As a 549 tritype I'm considered a triple withdrawn type. But my personality make up is more complex than that, as I can also demonstrate compliant and aggressive traits depending on circumstances. She is describing the Sp type 5 which is the stereotypical 5, but I'm the Sx type 5 which as you can imagine has an aggressive streak described by the Sx instinct.

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I shouldn't have to point out that most people are walking contradictions and bundles of inconsistent traits. Some if not most of us adopted typology as a means of resolving or at least explaining the contradictions and finding order amidst the chaos. Typology gives the illusion of consistency by simply eliminating the inconsistencies in determining type. This is especially true of the MBTI which demands that each person be exactly one type, the traits of which are wholly consistent and coherent. Sometimes people become disappointed in the MBTI because it fails to explain everything. But then, it wasn't invented to explain everything.

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JCF theory possesses the power to explain away some of the defects in the original MBTI by creating a more complex system of dominants, auxiliaries, tertiaries, and inferiors. But we're still left holding the bag when it comes to the trait of ambiversion. There is also a dissatisfying lack of conformity between dualistic (MBTI/JCF) and trialectic (Hornevian) personality systems. Are we talking about two different species of human?

It's easy enough to point out that Karen's three classic types conform well with the extrovert, introvert, and ambivert (and I'm sure this has been pointed out by others):

Aggressive/Extrovert - Compliant/Ambivert - Withdrawn/Introvert.

It also conforms well with the Enneagram's trialectic system of types. Neither of them however conforms with Jungian typology. From the standpoint of pure systematicity, dualistic JCF just doesn't fit with the human personality's three natural tendencies toward aggression, compliance, and withdrawing, or extroversion, ambiversion, and introversion.

I knew about this problem 20 years ago and at the time I was unable to resolve this difficult. Nor am I able to now. Nor can I cope with Jung's weirdness. He explains a lot without explaining anything at all, using obscure terminology that is, perhaps, intended to deceive the reader into believing that it's true simply because it's deep.
 

Such Irony

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I suppose my primary type is withdrawn. Secondary is compliant.
 

Kas

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[MENTION=13589]Mal12345[/MENTION] in what you quoted Horney compares these attitudes to the behaviour of kid- that's why dolls are there :D

K.Horney claims that all of these attitudes exist in us, but often one dominates. Us written this one is usually best tolerated by a person, others are more hidden. I think it's interesting to read about all of them and find own defensive mechanisms, because some of them are not that obvious. Like in me dominate attitude away and toward people so I was surprised to find some elements of my behaviour against people.

Her books are interesting and well written.
 

Betty Blue

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Probably somewhere between all three?

Idk... compliant then withdrawn followed by aggressive
 

Yama

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definitely compliant
 

Firebird 8118

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Hmm... given the description of each, I'd say that I'm sort of in between compliant and withdrawn (these days, leaning a little more towards one or the other depending on what situation I'm in).
 

magpie

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Aggressive/Withdrawn
 

Lady Lazarus

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Withdrawn>Aggressive>Compliant.
 

HongDou

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A mix of aggressive and compliant (moreso aggressive than compliant), withdrawn being the least relatable. Given I identify with the 728 tritype this makes sense.
 

Zeego

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Withdrawn is definitely first, but I'm not sure which one is second. Leaning towards Compliant.
 

Mal12345

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I'll respond to some posts here by stating that you can only "be" one type out of the three. If you have some secondary characteristic, such as being withdrawn but also compliant, there is a chance that you can also be aggressive. But the focus is on your preferred standpoint. As a triple withdrawn in the enneagram, I can also be compliant and aggressive. I've noticed however that these latter two traits are not well-developed. I am very skilled at avoiding and withdrawing. But although I can be compliant I resent it. And although I can be aggressive, I regret it.
 

Mal12345

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There is some systematicity here to make things more interesting, a kind of hierarchy of development. A Withdrawn person has less developed aggression, and so in Jungian terms the aggression is more primitive, meaning, it is linked to animal instincts. Whereas the compliance will be a little more developed, not as primitive, and is closer to the socially constructed (non-primitive) individual. It is aggression in the true sense of the word, "the action of attacking without provocation, especially in beginning a quarrel or war." That's not the
sense in which Karen intends the word "aggression."

The Aggressive type, on the other hand, has less developed withdrawn traits. But what does it mean? That the withdrawn traits are primitive? If you ignore everything that Jung has to say about it which is primitive. In this case you see not so much an acting out as with the Withdrawn's aggressive traits, but an acting in. When the Aggressive type withdraws, it withdraws all the way, becoming paralyzed with inactivity due to stress.

(If you want a stupid citation, you won't get any: it's not my fault that you haven't studied the world around you, read Jung, Horney, or any other real book in your life. The best "citations" are out there in the world. If you don't know how to look at the world around you, then no "citations" will help. And if you think the world around you isn't a good source of "citations," it's because you are intellectually divorced from reality.)

For the Compliant type it depends on the person whether they have developed aggression (read the biography of G. Gordon Liddy; I have, why haven't you?), or if they are more withdrawn than aggressive. The Compliant type will adapt to suit either type of environment. So you have a Compliant type who seems like an Aggressive type (as with the e-type 6 who seems like a type 8), or a Compliant type who has a tendency to withdraw.
 

Peregrine

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Definitely, albeit reluctantly, compliant. Withdrawn is a close second, even though I do crave human contact.
 

Mal12345

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The Hornevian types constitute three primary ways in which neurosis manifests itself in human personality as a rigid compulsivity. A general outline of the types goes like this:

A. Compliant (Moving Toward People)
  1. shows a marked need for affection and approval and an especial need for a "partner"
  2. has a tendency to subordinate himself
  3. has a general dependence upon others
"We find that the [neurotic] patient's reasoning, conscious or unconscious, is flawless, but rests on false premises. The fallacious premises are that he mistakes his need for affection and all that goes with it for a genuine capacity to love, and that he completely leaves out of the equation his aggressive and even destructive trends. In other words, he leaves out the whole neurotic conflict. What he expects is to do away with the harmful consequences of the unresolved conflicts without changing anything in the conflicts themselves—an attitude characteristic of every neurotic attempt at solution. That is why these attempts are inevitably doomed to failure."

B. Aggressive (Moving Against People)
  1. needs to gain control over others
  2. needs to excel, to achieve success, prestige, or recognition in any form
  3. regards himself as extremely realistic
"Because he is driven always to assert himself as the strongest, shrewdest, or most sought after, he tries to develop the efficiency and resourcefulness necessary to being so. The zest and intelligence he puts into his work may make him a highly esteemed employee or a success in a business of his own. However, the impression he gives of having an absorbing interest in his work will in a sense be misleading, because for him work is only a means to an end. He has no love for what he is doing and takes no real pleasure in it—a fact consistent with his attempt to exclude feelings from his life altogether."

C. Withdrawn (Moving Away From People)
  1. needs to feel superior to others by living in an "ivory tower"
  2. needs to be self-sufficient and independent of others
  3. feels estranged from the self
"His own room in hell would be all right. But to be tossed into a melting pot, to be molded or adapted to others, is a horrifying thought. He feels himself akin to a rare oriental rug, unique in its pattern and combination of colors, forever unalterable. He takes extraordinary pride in having kept free of the leveling influences of environment and is determined to keep on doing so."

"To speak, as Jung does, of a one-sided development appears thoroughly inadequate. It is at best a formalistically correct statement. But since it is based on a misconception of the dynamics, the implications are wrong. When Jung, starting from the concept of one-sidedness, continues to say that in therapy the patient must be helped to accept his opposite side, we say: How is that possible? The patient cannot accept it, he can only recognize it...What Jung has not properly evaluated is the compulsive nature of neurotic trends. Between moving toward people and moving against people there is not simply the difference between weakness and strength—or, as Jung would say, between femininity and masculinity. We all have potentialities both for compliance and aggression. And if a person not compulsively driven struggles hard enough, he can arrive at some integration. When the two patterns are neurotic, however, both are harmful to our growth. Two undesirables added together do not make a desirable whole, nor can two incompatibles make a harmonious entity."

"Whether the person lives in the city or the suburbs, whether he keeps this or that diet, goes to bed early or late, or serves on this or that committee, assumes undue importance. He thus acquires the characteristics that Jung calls extraversion. But while Jung regards extraversion as a one-sided development of constitutionally given trends, I see it as the result of trying to remove unresolved conflicts by externalization."

Why are you still practicing Jung and MBTI?
 

NAPSTABLOOK22

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Aggressive usually, although I can be withdrawn sometimes. I do not well identify with the description for compliant.
 
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