Imagined Human Beings. Bernard Jay Paris

by being self-sufficient. This involves not only living in imagination but also restricting their desires. In order to avoid being dependent on the environment, they try to subdue their inner cravings and to be content with little. They cultivate a “don’t care” attitude and protect themselves against frustration by believing that “nothing matters.”

      Detached people withdraw from both other people and themselves. They seek privacy, shroud themselves “in a veil of secrecy,” and, in their personal relations, draw around themselves “a kind of magic circle which no one may penetrate” (Horney 1945, 75–76). They withdraw from themselves by suppressing or denying their feelings. Their resignation from active living gives them an “onlooker” attitude that often enables them to be excellent observers both of others and of their own inner processes. Their insight divorced from feeling, they look at themselves “with a kind of objective interest, as one would look at a work of art” (74).

      Their withdrawal from themselves is in part an effort to resolve their inner conflicts. In this solution, says Horney, the subordinated trends are not deeply repressed; they are visible to the trained observer and are rather easily brought to awareness. Because detached people are likely to entertain the attitudes of the subordinated solutions, their values are highly contradictory. They have a “permanent high evaluation” of what they regard “as freedom and independence” and cultivate individuality, self-reliance, and an indifference to fate. But they may at one time “express an extreme appreciation for human goodness, sympathy, generosity, self-effacing sacrifice, and at another time swing to a complete jungle philosophy of callous self-interest” (Horney 1945, 94).

      In order to reduce their vulnerability, detached people believe, “consciously or unconsciously, that is it better not to wish or expect anything. Sometimes this goes with a conscious pessimistic outlook on life, a sense of its being futile anyhow and of nothing being sufficiently desirable to make an effort for it” (Horney 1950, 263, emphasis in original). They do not usually rail against life, however, but accept their fate with ironic humor or stoical dignity. They try to escape suffering by being independent of external forces, by feeling that nothing matters, and by concerning themselves only with things within their power. Their bargain is that if they ask nothing of others, they will not be bothered; if they try for nothing, they will not fail; and if they expect little of life, they will not be disappointed.

      Predominantly detached characters who have been analyzed in Horneyan terms include Horatio in Hamlet, Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, and Apemantus in Timon of Athens (Paris 1991a); Mr. Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (Paris 1978b); Dostoevsky’s underground man (Paris 1974); and Quentin Compson in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury (Butery 1989). The detached solution is particularly prevalent in twentieth-century literature, and much work remains to be done with characters who manifest it.

      Horney describes childhood experiences typical for those who have adopted each of the major solutions, but most children have a combination of these experiences and develop a combination of defenses. Conflicts between the solutions cause oscillations, inconsistencies, and self-hate. One of the most significant features of Horney’s theory is that it permits us to make sense of contradictory attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs by seeing them as part of structure of inner conflicts. Horneyan theory has a dynamic quality: solutions combine, conflict, become stronger or weaker, need to be defended, generate vicious circles, and are replaced by others when they collapse. This quality of the theory is difficult to convey in exposition, but it will become evident in our discussions of literature.

      While interpersonal difficulties are creating the movements toward, against, and away from people, and the conflicts between these moves, concomitant intrapsychic problems are producing their own defensive strategies. To compensate for feelings of self-hate and inadequacy, individuals create, with the aid of their imagination, an “idealized image” of themselves that they endow with “unlimited powers” and “exalted faculties” (Horney 1950, 22). The idealized image, in turn, generates neurotic claims, tyrannical “shoulds,” and neurotic pride, all of which ultimately increase self-hate.

      The content of the idealized image is much influenced by our predominant solution and the attributes it exalts. The idealized image of self-effacing people “is a composite of ‘lovable’ qualities, such as unselfishness, goodness, generosity, humility, saintliness, nobility, sympathy” (Horney 1950, 222). Arrogant-vindictive people see themselves as masters of all situations who are smarter, tougher, more realistic than other people. Narcissists see themselves as prophets and benefactors of mankind who have unlimited energies and are capable of magnificent achievements, effortlessly attained. Perfectionists regard themselves as models of rectitude who achieve a flawless excellence in the whole conduct of life. The idealized image of detached or resigned people “is a composite of self-sufficiency, independence, self-contained serenity, freedom from desires” and “stoicism” (277). In each solution, the idealized image may be modeled in whole or in part on a religious or cultural ideal or an example from history or personal experience.

      The creation of the idealized image leads to additional inner conflict. The conflict between the interpersonal strategies is imported into the idealized image, which reflects not only the predominant solution but also the subordinated ones. Since each solution glorifies a different set of traits, the idealized image has contradictory aspects, all of which demand to be actualized. A conflict also arises between pride and self-hate. Individuals can feel worthwhile only if they live up to their idealized image, deeming everything that falls short to be worthless. As a result, they develop a “despised image” of themselves that becomes the focus of self-contempt. A great many people shuttle, says Horney, “between a feeling of arrogant omnipotence and of being the scum of the earth” (1950, 188).

      The idealized image evolves into an idealized self and the despised image into a despised self, as people become convinced they really are the grandiose or awful beings they have imagined themselves to be. Horney posits four selves competing with each other: the real self, the idealized self, the despised self, and the actual self. The real (or possible) self is based on a set of biological predispositions that require favorable conditions for their actualization. The idealized (or impossible) self is an imaginary creation that is unrealistically grandiose, and the despised self is unrealistically worthless and weak. The actual self is what a person really is—a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, health and neurosis. The distance between the actual and real selves will vary, depending on the degree of self-alienation. It will be small in self-actualizing people.

      With the formation of the idealized image, the individual embarks upon a “search for glory,” as “the energies driving toward self-realization are shifted to the aim of actualizing the idealized self” (Horney 1950, 24). What is considered to be glorious depends on the major solution. Horney does not see the search for glory, the quest of the absolute, the need to be godlike as essential ingredients of human nature but as reactions to the frustration of basic needs. It is when people feel themselves to be nothing that they must claim to be all.

      For many people the search for glory is the most important thing in their lives. It gives them the sense of meaning and feeling of superiority they so desperately crave. They may experience depression or despair if they feel that their search for glory will never succeed. They fiercely resist all encroachments on their illusory grandeur and may prefer death to the shattering of their dreams. The search for glory is a “private religion” the rules of which are determined by the individual’s neurosis, but glory systems are also a prominent feature of every culture. They include organized religions, various forms of group identification, wars and military service, and competitions, honors, and hierarchical arrangements of all kinds.

      The creation of the idealized image produces not only the search for glory but the whole structure of phenomena that Horney calls the pride system. We take an intense pride in the attributes of our idealized selves and on the basis of this pride make “neurotic claims” on others. At the same time, we feel that we should perform in a way that is commensurate with our grandiose conception of ourselves. If the world fails to honor our claims or we fail to live up to our shoulds, we become our despised selves and experience agonizing self-hate. As with our idealized image, the specific nature of our pride, shoulds, claims, and