Reich, Winnicott, Horney on Self

Paper Summary:

Orgastic potency, the true self and the false self are three concepts elaborated by Wilhelm Reich, Donald Winnicott and Karen Horney describing the healthy mental (and physical) state that every person should strive to attain. The individual approaches that the three theorists adopted in their analysis of character structure include many divergent notions and a small number of consistencies. The paper provides a comparison of Reich's theories and therapeutic technique with those devised by Winnicott and Horney to underline the departures and similarities between the three concepts.

Outline
I. Comparison
1. Centrality of the Body vs. Object Relations
2. Sources of Neurosis
3. Mechanisms of Character Disorders
a. Reich
b. Winnicott
c. Horney
4. Methods of Effective Therapy
a. Reich
b. Winnicott
c. Horney
References

From the Paper:

"Winnicott's therapeutic method reproduces the maternal environment where the analyst plays the part of the mother and the patient that of the child. In the context of interactive play, the analyst encourages the patient to regress to childhood and then, by displaying empathy and meeting the patient's needs, embraces the emergence of his "true self".
For Horney, the objective of therapy is to decrease people's anxiety until they are prepared to let go of their neurotic solution."

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