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Again and again in psychoanalysis we meet with topics that are hard to tackle and harder to define. Therefore the problem of methodology should play a major part in explaining psychoanalytical material. As far as completeness is concerned, I am fully aware of the difficulties involved. Since this is so, we just will have to plunge in and come back to a consideration of methods while we are talking about our topic.
Karen Horney, talking about the Idealized Image in Our Inner Conflicts,1 speaks of the major neurotic attitudes toward others, through which a person may attempt to solve his conflicts or, “more precisely, dispose of them.” She continues: “One of these consists in repressing certain aspects of the personality and bringing their opposites to the fore; the other is to put such distance between oneself and one's fellows that the conflicts are set out of operation.” And later: “A further attempt is the creation of an image of what the neurotic believes himself to be or of what at the time he feels he can or ought to be.” Later she says that this phenomenon of the Idealized Image has long been recognized. She quotes Freud, who calls it Ego Ideal, Narcissism, Superego. According to Horney it also forms the central thesis of Adler's psychology and is described there as a striving for superiority.
Completeness-incompleteness is a pair of opposites we find in all personalities, healthy and sick alike. It is a basic pair of opposites and therefore a definite expression of every personality. Only in certain cases, in which a person expresses only a part of it, does it form an aspect of neurosis. Completeness-incompleteness therefore relates to the whole of the personality. We assume it to be present at all times and to be seen in many forms of behavior. The Idealized Image may be manifest in these patterns but not necessarily.
The ways of understanding the deeper meaning of human personality can be different. Freud's personality concept is somewhat like a release that c