Imagined Human Beings. Bernard Jay Paris

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      Our need to actualize our idealized image leads us to impose stringent demands and taboos upon ourselves, a phenomenon Horney calls “the tyranny of the should.” The function of the shoulds is “to make oneself over into one’s idealized self: the premise on which they operate is that nothing should be, or is, impossible for oneself” (Horney 1950, 68). The shoulds are characterized by their coerciveness, disregard for feasibility, imperviousness to psychic laws, and reliance on willpower for fulfillment and imagination for denial of failure. There is a good deal of externalization connected with the shoulds. We often feel our shoulds as the expectations of others, our self-hate as their rejection, and our self-criticism as their unfair judgment. We expect others to live up to our shoulds and displace onto them our rage at our own failure to do so. The shoulds are a defense against self-loathing, but, like other defenses, they aggravate the condition they are employed to cure. Not only do they increase self-alienation, but they also intensify self-hate, since the penalty for failure is a feeling of worthlessness and self-contempt. This is why the shoulds have such a tyrannical power. “It is the threat of a punitive self-hate” that “truly makes them a regime of terror” (85).

      The shoulds are impossible to live up to because they are so unrealistic: we should love everyone; we should never make a mistake; we should always triumph; we should never need other people, and so forth. The shoulds always demand the repression of needs, feelings, and wishes that cannot be repressed. The shoulds are also impossible to live up to because they reflect our inner conflicts and are at war with each other. They are generated by the idealized image, but the idealized image is a composite of various solutions, each of which produces its own set of demands. As a result, we are often caught in a crossfire of conflicting shoulds. As we try to obey contradictory inner dictates, we are bound to hate ourselves whatever we do, and even if, paralyzed, we do nothing at all. The crossfire of conflicting shoulds is a powerful concept that explains much inertia and inconsistency.

      Another product of the idealized image is “neurotic claims,” which are our demands to be treated in accordance with our grandiose conception of ourselves. Claims also involve the expectation that we will get what we need in order to make our solution work. Generally speaking, neurotic claims are unrealistic, egocentric, and vindictive. They demand results without effort, are based on an assumption of specialness or superiority, deny the world of cause and effect, and are “pervaded by expectations of magic” (Horney 1950, 62).

      Neurotic claims do not achieve their objective, which is confirmation of our idealized image and our predominant solution. If the world fails to honor our claims, as is often the case, it is saying that we are not who we think we are and that our strategy for dealing with life is ineffective. We may react with rage, despair, and self-hate, but we may also reaffirm our claims, which are extremely tenacious, since we depend on them for self-aggrandizement and a sense of control over our lives.

      The claims are what we feel entitled to according to the conception of justice that is part of our predominant solution. Although specific expectations will vary from solution to solution, the essential conception of justice remains the same. In a just world, our claims will be honored; if they are not, life is absurd. Since our solution will collapse if the universe is not organized as it is supposed to be, we have a powerful vested interest in preserving our belief system in face of contrary evidence. If we become convinced that the world has belied our expectations, we may go to pieces or switch to another solution with a different conception of the universe.

      An important part of the justice system in each solution is what Horney calls a “deal” and what I have called a bargain with fate, the specifics of which will vary with the solution, as I have shown. The bargain is that if we obey our shoulds, our claims will be honored, our solution will work, and our idealized conception of ourselves will be confirmed. I have made a detailed study of this phenomenon in Bargains with Fate: Psychological Crises and Conflicts in Shakespeare and His Plays (1991), where I argue that the leading characters of the major tragedies are thrown into a state of psychological crisis by precipitating events that challenge their bargains with fate.

      It is important to recognize that the bargain with fate involves not only an expectation that our claims will be honored if we live up to our shoulds, but also a conviction that we will be punished if we violate them. The justice system of our solution can turn against us, as it does against Macbeth. In some cases, conflicting solutions generate conflicting bargains, ethical codes, and conceptions of justice.

      Neurotic pride, says Horney, is “the climax and consolidation of the process initiated with the search for glory” (1950, 109). It substitutes for realistic self-confidence and self-esteem a pride in the attributes of the idealized self, in the successful assertion of claims, and in the “loftiness and severity” of the inner dictates. Since pride turns the compulsive behaviors of the various solutions into virtues, anything can be a source of pride. There is commonly a great pride in the mental processes of imagination, reason, and will, since “the infinite powers” we ascribe to ourselves “are, after all, powers of the mind.” The mind must work incessantly at “maintaining the private fictitious world through rationalizations, justifications, externalizations, reconciling irreconcilables—in short, through finding ways to make things appear different from what they are” (91–94).

      Pride is a vitally important defense, but since it is based on illusion and self-deception, it increases our vulnerability. Threats to pride produce anxiety and hostility; its collapse results in self-contempt. We are especially subject to feelings of shame (when we violate our own pride) and humiliation (when our pride is violated by others). We react to shame with self-hate and to humiliation with a vindictive hostility ranging “from irritability, to anger, to a blind murderous rage” (Horney 1950, 99).

      There are various devices for restoring pride. These include retaliation, which reestablishes the superiority of the humiliated person, and loss of interest in that which is threatening or damaging. They also include various forms of distortion, such as forgetting humiliating episodes, denying responsibility, blaming others, and embellishing. Sometimes “humor is used to take the sting out of an otherwise unbearable shame” (Horney 1950, 106). We also protect our pride by avoidances, such as not trying, restricting wishes and activities, and refusing to become involved in any serious pursuit or relationship.

      Self-hate is usually the end product of the intrapsychic strategies of defense, each of which tends to magnify the individual’s feelings of inadequacy and failure. Self-hate is essentially the rage the idealized self feels toward the self we actually are for not being what it “should” be. Self-hate is in large part an unconscious process, since it is usually too painful to be confronted directly. The chief defense against awareness is externalization, which takes active and passive forms. Active externalization “is an attempt to direct self-hate outward, against life, fate, institutions or people.” In passive externalization “the hate remains directed against the self but is perceived or experienced as coming from the outside.” When self-hate is conscious, there is often a pride taken in it that serves to maintain self-glorification: “The very condemnation of imperfection confirms the godlike standards with which the person identifies himself” (Horney 1950, 114–15). Horney sees self-hate as “perhaps the greatest tragedy of the human mind. Man in reaching out for the Infinite and Absolute also starts destroying himself. When he makes a pact with the devil, who promises him glory, he has to go to hell—to the hell within himself” (154).

      As we turn to look at literature from a Horneyan perspective, it is important to keep in mind that we shall find neither characters in books nor people in life who correspond exactly to Horney’s descriptions. Her types are composites, drawn from her experience with people who share certain dominant trends but who differ from each other in many important ways. The Horneyan typology helps us to see how certain traits and behaviors are related to each other within a psychological system, but once we have identified a person’s predominant solution, we must not assume the presence of all the characteristics Horney ascribes to that solution. It is also important to remember, as Horney observes, that “although people tending toward the same main solution have characteristic similarities, they may differ widely with regard to [their] level of human qualities, gifts, or achievements” (1950, 191). The situation is further complicated by the fact that people experience inner