Is Western Society Too Idealized?

Does western culture focus too much on the future and not enough on the here and now? Are Americans so caught up in living the “American dream” that they neglect their real selves? These are just a couple of the questions that have been on my mind lately. Karen Horney’s concepts of the real and idealized self helped propel my thinking on these issues to the next level. Whether it’s encouraging or discomforting, I have yet to decide, but I do think I have a better understanding of what may be happening.

According to psychological theorist Karen Horney, children who receive loving satisfaction of their needs develop into productive adults. If they experience the basic evil, inadequate parenting, they stray from their real self and develop neuroticism. Along with neurotic behavior they develop an idealized self, which is a fictitious view of who they should be. It is a distorted view that cannot be achieved. This concept is perhaps the one that has resonated with me the most so far. Horney often referred to the ideal self as the “tyranny of the shoulds.” I would venture to say that almost every person in the United States, several times on a daily basis, uses the phrase, “I should really…”

I do subscribe to the importance of childhood as it relates to development. The first years of life are clearly extremely formative and provide a basis for our hopefully fruitful future. With that said, I would like to take Horney’s theory a step further. Can an individual develop an idealized self even after experiencing healthy childhood development?

I think the answer is yes. While I haven’t conducted any research on those questions, I would suggest that there are a plethora of case studies at our fingertips: American citizens. I think that the pressure to succeed and achieve goals has become a staple of American culture, in some ways to its detriment. The notion of achieving the American dream, owning a beautiful house with a family while holding down a job that brings in at least a six figure salary, is ingrained in the minds of almost every American. We set goals and if we achieve them, we have to set more goals. Essentially, we are never satisfied; we always need more. I realize this isn’t true for every American, but I think a great many.

Some might suggest that there is nothing wrong with setting goals and achieving them. I agree, if the cost to the self doesn’t outweigh the benefits. According to Horney, people who live in accordance with their real selves are on the way to self-realization. The question to ask then is whether this goal-driven society is living in accordance with the real self or the idealized self. I think that people can have a very healthy concept of self while achieving goals in life. However, it seems to me that many Americans might not be on a path to self-realization.

Perhaps my pessimistic view of western culture and its lack of emphasis on the real self is a bit much for some people to take, but I do think it is a genuine problem, especially in the United States. My suggestion is that we take some advice from Horney and try to live in accordance with our real self. That might mean slowing down and actually spending some time with our own person and getting to know him or her. It would certainly do us all some good.

Someone recently asked me...

how do you suppress bad thoughts? In order to address this topic one first has to define "bad" thoughts. There are several ways to approach the concept of bad thoughts and depending on your background and values these approaches can be quite varying. I might suggest that there is a continuum of "badness" on which our thoughts might lie. There are the extreme thoughts of harm and deviancy that are essentially indisputably bad. But then there are the thoughts of yearning or pride, which while some consider bad, others might say are actually fairly good.

For the sake of this discussion, let us assume we are speaking of the indisputably bad thoughts. So how does one go about repressing such thoughts? I would say that one should not. Attempting to suppress one's thoughts is essentially volunteering to create psychological problems due to repressed emotions. Individuals spend thousands of dollars in therapy trying to uncover their repressed thoughts. People with dissociative identity disorder have suppressed their thoughts to the point of creating alternate personalities to deal with the thoughts. But people are wondering how to actively suppress bad thoughts? I would warn that this should be a practice to avoid.
Rather than suppress these thoughts, why not be as aware of them as one is able? Western culture, for years, has been creating a society of repression in regards to freethinking. So little value is placed on self-awareness and development of the true self. We are almost forced to conform to the notion that taking care of your true self first is a selfish act, when in fact it could easily be argued that the only way to truly care for others is to care for yourself first.

By being aware of bad thoughts that enter one's conscious, one is able to reflect on these thoughts and attempt to determine what it is that is causing these processes to occur. I tend to think there is an explanation for most things; if you are having negative thoughts about something, isn't it best to examine the situation and figure out why these thoughts are occurring rather than pretending they don't exist? The risk of suppressing such thoughts is too great. The only way to truly know one's self is to consciously be aware of one's thought processes - suppressing these ideas can only lead to a path of unhappiness and possible destruction.

Strangers to Ourselves, or not?

I have spent a great deal of time lately considering unconscious versus conscious processes. This is mostly likely due to a book I recently read, Strangers to Ourselves, by Timothy Wilson. The focus of the book is the adaptive unconscious, its processes, and how to adjust our behavior through understanding the goals of the adaptive unconscious. While reading the book and everyday since I finished it, I continue to ponder the importance or rather the power of the unconscious. Wilson uses several analogies to illustrate the varying points on the continuum of unconscious control of the self. I’m still trying to figure out which point on that continuum I subscribe to.

On one end of the spectrum is the extreme of the unconscious essentially controlling all aspects of whom and what we are while the conscious plays a very small, minute role in daily functioning. At first reading I thought this idea to be a bit too extreme, but upon further reflection is didn’t seem all that crazy to me. Perhaps our unconscious is so powerful and manipulative (maybe too strong of a word) it leads our conscious to believe that it is making the decisions, when in actuality the unconscious has already decided what the decision will be. According to Wilson, the goals of the unconscious are strong and are hard to break. If we are unaware of these goals, I suppose it is possible to move through life aimlessly directed by motivations that you are completely unaware of. This idea might explain why people occasionally (or maybe too often in some cases) act in strange, unexplainable ways. In attempting to explain why someone did something, the individual might suggest that he really doesn’t know; that he was acting outside of himself. If they are so unaware of their unconscious goals, that certainly may be true.

On the opposite end of the continuum the unconscious and conscious trade roles. The conscious is in complete control while the unconscious is there to perform basic tasks that the conscious can’t be bothered with. I think this would be the perspective that most people would and do subscribe to. The notion of being in complete control is often comforting, however I think to dismiss the idea that there are unconscious goals that push us in certain directions is dangerous. Do we really want to have all of the responsibility of controlling out destiny? Is it possible for our conscious to process, evaluate, interpret, and draw conclusions on all that we take in as humans? I would say no, it is not possible, and I think almost every scholar of psychology and neuroscience would agree. So it seems at this point, I’m leaning towards the other end of the continuum (I really didn’t feel that way when I started reading the book!)

There is one last point on the continuum that Wilson discusses. On this point the conscious and unconscious are a team, they work together evaluating and interpreting information. They divide and conquer, one working with specific information and processes, while the other does the same with another set of information. It often takes both to make an informed decision. This idea might be the most comfortable to me, but I’m not sure if it’s the most accurate. I think that I’m making a decision about what I want to have for dinner, but how can I be certain that my unconscious hasn’t made that decision?

The best conclusion for me at this point is that the roles of the conscious and unconscious lie somewhere in the middle of the continuum. This is a very interesting topic for me and I look forward to consuming more research and perhaps doing some of my own. Will we ever know the truth on this matter? It’s hard to imagine at this point.