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Beginning with her trenchant analysis of American culture in The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (Horney, 1937), Horney sought continually to situate her analyses of neurotic phenomena in the larger context of social values and cultural institutions. The present paper, based on cyclical psychodynamics, which owes much to Horney's theoretical perspective (Wachtel, 1977, 1985, 1987), applies the analysis of vicious circles to a central feature of our society: our preoccupation with economic growth and expectation of ever higher incomes and more material possessions.
There is much reason to think that these characteristics are leading us onto a collision course with the limits of our natural ecology and that, furthermore, far from yielding the satisfactions that we think they do, they in fact are a source of quite considerable frustration and unhappiness. Like a neurosis, these patterns of living perpetuate themselves in such a way that awareness of their consequences is prevented even as those consequences take an increasing toll on the vitality of our lives (Wachtel, 1989).
Our society's preoccupation with economic growth is part of a larger pattern of assumptions, part of a mind-set that goes beyond the realm of material goods alone. The mental habits that support our commitment to growth are implicated in almost every aspect of daily living. They shape our perceptions in such a way that the choices we make seem not only logical but inevitable. It is necessary to understand this larger web in which we are caught if we are to have any chance of extricating ourselves.
Finding a way out of the closed circle of culturally shared suppositions