Psychoanalytic Criticism of “Affection Seeking” and its Difference with “Healthy Love” in the Novel Called “My Share” Based on Horney’s Theory

Psychoanalytic criticism is a new branch of interdisciplinary criticisms. In this criticism, the researcher or critic tries to explore the hidden angles, behavioral conflicts, and psychological symptoms of the characters in a literary work to prepare the text’s characters for analysis. The German psychoanalyst, Karen Horney divides the phenomenon of love into three natural, psychotic and spontaneous types, distinguishing between the nature of incontinence and spontaneity. Horney criticizes psychotic need for love in Freud’s libidinal theory. Horney believes that the core of this need consists of a fundamental anxiety, the anxiety that arouses feelings of despair and loneliness in a hostile world. The anxiety is fundamentally manifested in various ways, and the neurotic tries to escape his feelings. Based on a descriptive-analytical approach from a psychoanalytic perspective, this article attempts to explain the distinction between the subject of healthy love and affection seeking in accordance with Karen Horney’s theory in the protagonist of the novel. What is reflected in reading of Masoumeh’s character in the novel “My Share” is that her love for those around her is not a healthy love, but a psychotic love, derived from her affection seeking need.