As Sue's therapists we have undergone an extensive study of what her personality and experiences consist of. To explain Sue's lack of compassion and emotion towards most people we look to Freud's psychodynamic theory. Freud tells us that childhood experiences play a major role in the unconscious decisions we make. Sue's negligent parents are the cause of her young maturity as she adopts a mother figure towards her younger sister. This lonely childhood has lead to her detached nature as an adult. Because Sue never formed strong parental bonds as a child, she is now unable to create and sustain companion relationships. Looking to Karen Horney's perspective, Sue developed basic anxiety stemming from her basic hostility as a child, in response to her negligent parents. Alfred Adler suggests that all children develop an inferiority complex, which develops into a drive for superiority. This is easily observed through Sue's constant attempts to dominate McKinley High, specifically seen through her quest for victory with the Cheerios. Sue is so determined to achieve superiority that she will endanger the lives of her precious Cheerios. At one point, Sue took drastic measures and attempted to shoot one of her Cheerios out of a cannon in hopes of gaining points with the judges. In Sue's adult life, she unconsciously uses reaction formation, humor and projection as a means of self defense. These defense mechanisms can be seen through her constant degradation of Will Schuester by criticizing every aspect of his life.
As we continue to analyze Sue's curious character, we look to Carl Roger's theories of self esteem. This humanistic/existential perspective nails Sue as highly incongruent. Sue's self concept is largely disproportional to her ideal self, and most importantly her true self. Her incongruent self concept manifests itself in a disturbingly harsh true self. Sue believes that she has already reached her ideal self. Her personality will remain unbalanced until she realizes that her self perception is skewed. We now turn to Maslow to explain Sue's quest for self actualization. Sue has fulfilled the basic psychological and safety stages of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. However, she has skipped the stage of love and belonging. Because Sue is unable to form a legitimate personal bond with any companion, she is unable to reach self actualization. She harbors a superficial level of self esteem which is shown through her extreme confidence, yet lack of respect for others.
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