Karen Horney's Analysis

Karen Horney defines a basic anxiety as insidiously increasing, all pervading feeling of being lonely and helpless in a hostile world” (Horney, 1937, p.89). When a child experiences basic anxiety they can develop self defense mechanisms. These self defense mechanisms can become very common throughout the child’s life. So common in fact, that they become a permanent part of one’s personality and become a neurotic need. Horney developed a list of ten neurotic needs that could be categorized into three neurotic trends: moving towards other people (the complaint personality), moving against other people (the aggressive personality) and movement away from other people (the detached personality) (Shultz & Shultz, 2013, p.164). An apparent connection can be drawn between Horney’s neurotic trends and Timothy Keller’s chapter “The Seduction of Success” in his book Counterfeit Gods. According to Keller, “a sign you may
Many people do not believe they have idols as they “do not bow down to other gods”. Idols are deep in our hearts and hinder our relationships with Christ. The Idol of success is prevalent in today’s society-a society that promotes power, money and prestige. As a business major, it can be easy to fall into the idolatry of success. The end goal of business is of course, to make a profit. Without profit a business is not successful, it can be tempting to weigh self worth on success. If a neurotic individual has one of Horney’s personality types they are especially susceptible to falling into the idolatry of success. The connections between Horney’s personality types and Keller’s seduction of success are apparent. The most difficult part is removing idolatry from ones heart. Keller writes that “the idol of success cannot be simply expelled, but must be replaced” (Keller, 2013, p. 93). Only by replacing the idols in our hearts with God can we truly live our lives in peace and