On Early Alienation from the Self Herbert M. Rosenthal

Probably no other psychoanalytic pioneer had discussed “alienation from the self” (AFS) more extensively than Karen Horney. Nor has any other analyst, to my knowledge, given this phenomenon a more central role in the formation of neurosis. However, while discussing AFS in detail, as well as giving the consequences of this phenomenon, she never gave us a time point in the development of neurosis at which it appears as an essential factor, nor did she give a detailed dynamic description of early childhood development, healthy or neurotic, which could shed light on the earliest appearance of AFS.

Several object relations psychoanalysts have contributed pertinent material to this problem. In this paper we will try to establish a point in the development of the child when alienation first appears. In addition to establishing a time point at which AFS appears in the developing child, our findings will lead to several far-reaching conclusions, using a combination of the earlier theory of Karen Horney and the newer ones of the object relations school.

Although the word alienation is a relatively recent one, namely, from the nineteenth century, the concept of it is much older. Hegel and Marx used it not in the sense of “insanity,” as the French do, but in the sense of a social defect, “where his own act becomes to him an alien power, standing over and against him, instead of being ruled by him.”¹ As to the concept, according to Erich Fromm,² it is equivalent to the word idolatry in the Old Testament. As to the concept “alienation from oneself,” Fromm writes:

We can speak of idolatry or alienation not only in relationship to other people, but also in relationship to oneself, when the person is subject to irrational passions. The person who is mainly motivated by his lust for power does not experience himself any more in the richness and limitlessness of a human being, but he becomes a slave to one partial striving in him, which is projected into ex