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The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 64, No. 4, December 2004 ( 2004)THE PREDICTIVE POWER OF HORNEYS
PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH:AN EMPIRICAL STUDYFrederick L. Coolidge,1 Daniel L. Segal,1 Charles C. Benight,1
and Jack Danielian2This study investigated the construct validity of a measure of Karen Horneys (1945) psychoanalytic theory that postulated three neurotic trends: compliant, aggressive, and detached.
Her theory was operationalized by the Horney-Coolidge Type Indicator (HCTI). One hundred seventy-two adults completed the HCTI and the short form of the Coolidge Axis II
Inventory, a measure of the three DSM-IV personality disorder clusters. Multiple regression
and canonical correlation analyses revealed significant and differential patterns of the three
HCTI dimensions with the three clusters. Because Paris (1994) has noted that Horneys neurotic trends may today be conceived of as personality disorders, one implication of the present findings is that Horneys dynamic theory can be valid and useful in the general
understanding of personality disorders from a cluster perspective.KEY WORDS: HCTI; personality disorders; Karen Horney; personality disorder clusters;
aggression; compliance; detachment.This study investigated the construct validity of a new measure of Karen
Horneys (1945) psychoanalytic theory. Horney proposed that people
would defend against a basic anxiety (loss or separation from their mothers and helplessness in a hostile world) by various combinations of three
strategies: moving towards other people (Compliant Trend), against other
people (Aggressive Trend), and/or away from other people (Detached
Trend). Horney saw the role of predetermined triangular conflicts, that is,
Oedipal conflicts as secondary to child-mother or child-parent dyadic failure in the psychogenesis of character disturbances. She further postulated
that healthy adults might operate freely and flexibly along all three
dimensions, while neurotic adults may become crystallized or fixated
along a single dimension. It has been suggested that her term neurosis1University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO.2American Institute for Psychoanalysis, 329 East 42nd Street, New York, NY.Address correspondence to Frederick L. Coolidge, Ph.D., Psychology Department, P.O.
Box 7150, Colorado Springs, CO 80933-7150; e-mail: [email protected].
3630002-9548/04/1200-0363/1 2004 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis364 COOLIDGE, SEGAL, BENIGHT, AND DANIELIANis synonymous with the modern Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) concept of personality disorders (Paris, 1994).In Horneys later work (1950), she elaborated on the intrapsychic
mechanisms involved in these interpersonal strategies. She...