The Seba library treats Externalization in 8 passages, across 5 authors (including Horney, Karen, Zimmer, Heinrich, Wiener, Jan).
others are as he sees them in the light of his externalizations and he merely responds to their being that way. What he does not feel is the fact that he responds to something which he himself has put into them.
Horney identifies the core paradox of externalization: the subject experiences his own projections as objective properties of others, making the mechanism exceptionally resistant to self-recognition.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950thesis
A different way of releasing his inner tension is through passive externalization. This shows in his feeling accused by others, suspected or neglected, kept down, treated with contempt, abused, exploited, or treated with outright cruelty.
Horney articulates the passive variant of externalization, in which self-accusation and inner tension are displaced onto perceived persecution by others, contrasting it in both mechanism and effectiveness with active externalization.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950thesis
This lively series of transformations is an excellent example of the mythological trait of externalization or projection. The buffalo-demon, employing his Māyā-power, projects his vital energy into new forms.
Zimmer explicitly equates externalization with projection as a mythological process by which inner psychic energies assume successive outer forms, demonstrating the term's applicability to comparative religious imagination.
, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946thesis
transference can emerge in analysis as a present repetition of an aspect of a relationship with someone from the past (i.e., an externalization of an internal object), it can also reflect a present mood that is unconscious to the patient.
Wiener situates externalization within transference theory, defining it as the projection of an internal object onto the analyst while distinguishing it from other transference modalities.
, The Therapeutic Relationship: Transference, Countertransference, and the Making of Meaning, 2009supporting
Sadistic trends, comparison with vindictiveness, 190, 199; and externalization of self-torture, 146, 301
Horney's index cross-references externalization specifically with the externalization of self-torture, linking it to sadistic trends and vindictiveness as a pathway by which inner self-directed cruelty is redirected outward.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting
Neurotic Disturbances in Human Relationships… externalization of, 293, 298 ff.; and feelings of insecurity, 295, 296; and influence of intrapsychic factors, 299, 306; and pride system, 291, 296, 297, 298
Horney's structural index demonstrates that externalization is systematically implicated in neurotic relational disturbances, functioning in concert with the pride system and intrapsychic factors.
, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting
culture: bread and wine as expression of, 253; externalization of, 585
Jung's index entry gestures toward a civilizational application of externalization, treating culture itself as an outward expression of inner psychic dynamics.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958aside
he doggedly avoided facing responsibility and attributed the sexual problems to a number of factors outside of himself: that is, to his wife's sexual lack of interest and her disinclination to change
Yalom describes a clinical instance of responsibility-avoidance that functionally parallels externalization, though framed in existential rather than psychoanalytic terms.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980aside