Preliminary Psychometric Properties of a Measure of Karen Horney’s Tridimensional Theory in Children and Adolescents à Frederick L. Coolidge, Daniel L. Segal, Alisa J. Estey, and Paula J. Neuzil University of Colorado at Colorado Springs This study established the psychometric properties of a child and adolescent version of the Horney- Coolidge Tridimensional Inventory (HCTI), which assesses psychoanalyst Karen Horney’s theory of neurotic types. Parents of 302 children (ages 5 to 17 years; median age 5 12.0 years) completed the new 45-item version of the HCTI and the Coolidge Personality and Neuropsychological Inventory (CPNI) about their children. The three main scales (Compliance, Aggression, and Detachment) had good internal scale reliability and excellent test-retest reliability. Principal components analysis supported Horney’s three dimensions and a six-component substructure. There was also sufficient construct validity with personality disorder scales from the CPNI with the three HCTI dimensions and their six components. The implications of the findings are discussed for Horneyan theory. & 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 67:383–390, 2011. Keywords: adolescence; assessment; child clinical psychology; child development; child psychopathology In 1945, Karen Horney published her classic text Our Inner Conflicts, in which she proposed that three relatively independent defense mechanisms helped children to cope with a ‘‘basic anxiety.’’ She theorized that these coping mechanisms were not ad hoc ego defenses but could become chronic personality characteristics, which she labeled ‘‘neurotic trends.’’ According to Horney, the compliant type solved the issue of basic anxiety by ‘‘moving toward’’ people. She proposed that they had a strong need for affection and approval from others, and especially a need for a ‘‘partner.’’ The neurotic aspects of the compliant type included compulsivity, indiscriminate tendencies for moving towards other people, and anxiety or depression when frustrated. Horney also proposed that just as the compliant type indiscriminately finds most people nice (often to their chagrin), the aggressive type assumes that others are hostile and that life is a constant struggle, characterized by Horney as ‘‘moving against’’ others. Fear is never admitted or shown and they will attempt to exclude feelings altogether. There is a strong need to outsmart and exploit others and relationships are developed solely to better themselves. Their primary need is having control of others and life is seen as a battle they must fight to win. For the detached type, Horney emphasized that this is not a person who merely wants to occasionally be alone, as she noted that nearly everyone wants to be alone at certain times. For Horney, the detached type included even an estrangement from one’s own self, including numbness to emotional experiences and a strong amount of uncertainty as to one’s own feelings including love, hate, desires, beliefs, etc. This type is characterized as ‘‘moving away’’ from others. She even likened some detached types to zombies of Haitian folklore, however, she did note that some detached types may have rich emotional lives. She proposed that what all detached types had in common was their capacity to look at themselves and others with an ‘‘objective interest.’’ In other words, they view themselves, others, and life in an emotionally distant and uninvolved fashion. They also value their own self-sufficiency and resourcefulness, and they do so either consciously or unconsciously by restricting their needs. à This article was reviewed and accepted under the editorship of Beverly E. Thorn. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Frederick L. Coolidge, Psychology Department, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs Pkwy., Colorado Springs, Colorado 80918; e-mail: fcoolidg@uccs.edu JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 67(4), 383--390 (2011) & 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jclp). DOI: 10.1002/jclp.20768