Insightful Verses

In her last course on psychoanalytic technique, Horney, in elaborating the concept of alienation, described the four “selves.” The idealized self is associated with unconscious pride and grandiosity. The despised self is the fabrication of one's self-hate, self-contempt, and self-rejection. The actual self is the person of the present as he functions in and is seen by the world. The real self is a hypothetical entity, which is the true potential of the individual if he were free of his neurotic, unhealthy, alienated defenses.

Although such a classification has the limitations of any structural topography, it is a most useful and practical concept in clinical work. Patients who understand and feel the meaning of these concepts to the extent that they wish to express themselves in a poetic medium, are more apt to benefit from psychoanalysis. Of course the tendency to intellectualize through poetry must be kept in mind. The sense of poetry (not a knowledge of poetry) in the patient and the therapist can prove a most valuable asset to psychoanalysis.

The following verses of my patient are being published verbatim. They are titled “My Three Dimensions.”