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The measurement of Horney's clinical constructs (Horney, 1950) has traditionally been neglected in favor of descriptions based on professional opinion, case history, observation, or anecdote. The latter approach has revealed substantial support for Horney's typology of character structures and pride system concepts describing dysfunctional behavior (Rubin, 1983; Symonds, 1971). However, this reliance on personal appraisal has obvious limitations relating to diagnostic ambiguity, imprecise terminology, differential criteria for treatment outcome, conclusions assuming etiology while based on correlational relationships, circular thinking, prospective inferences with retrospective data, personalized objectivity, projective clouding by the professional involved in treatment, and so forth.
A model of human behavior that does not have a nonpartisan set of procedures for testing its own conclusions is inevitably fixed in a circular reprocessing of its own assumptions. The discussion by Kuhn (1970) on models, assumptions, and creative change is certainly pertinent to the dilemma of the clinical professional who eschews the use of relatively valid and reliable measurements of behavior.
It is especially uncanny that since the publication in 1950 of Horney's summary work, there have been few attempts to investigate her concepts in operational terms (Schmidt, 1977). There are three issues underlying this dearth of statistical research.
The first problem involves the dilemma of how to assess one of Horney's three personality types, the expansive, who disdains coming to a clinical helper with problems. The expansive type is primarily involved in solving his inner conflicts by means of extreme behaviors focused on achievement, aggressiveness, mastery, dominance, power, control, rationality, and independence. The issue is more involved than suspected, since the standard measurement scales that attempt to assess neurotic or dysfunctional