Analysis of Neurotic Mechanism of Moving Toward People in Masnavi Stories Based on Karen Horney’s Neuroticism Theory

Human beings confront so many hardships in their life, and these hardships affect their life and personality. Some basic hardships of childhood, such as parents’ improper behavior, lead to sufferings that have a fundamental role in a person’s life and actions in the maturity period. These important and influential sufferings result in abnormal behaviors in one’s different periods of life. Karen Horney, a German psychologist, has an important theory about human psychological sufferings known as “Neuroticism.” She discusses the causes of neuroticism and considers some mechanisms as defensive behaviors or structures that the neurotic person uses to relieve their pain and reach relaxation. One of these mechanisms is “moving toward people”. Horney believes that all of the mechanisms, especially the mechanism of moving toward people that neurotic person refuges in, are not treatments. Not only they do not provide security and comfort for neurotics, but they also exacerbate their neuroticism. Rumi as a great mystic, poet, and thinker that has used the Quran, Islamic and Iranian knowledge in addition to a great deal of the common knowledges of his time, and compiled so many universal works such as Masnavi and Gazaliyyate Shams, according to his mission i.e. saving people and bringing them to the prosperity, was not indifferent to the inner and psychological sufferings of human beings. He has had deep thoughts and reflections on human psychological issues and has presented many valuable ideas in this regard. Rumi has competently pointed out the causes of the tendency to the mechanism of moving toward people and its complications and consequences in his stories and allegories. This paper will investigate the different manifestations of the mechanism in the anecdotes and allegories of Rumi, clarifying the position of this mechanism in the actions of neurotic characters of his stories and allegories