Karen Horney (1885–1952,) née Danielsen, was a German-born American psychoanalyst. Often classified as neo-Freudian, she departed from Sigmund Freud’s fundamental principles and suggested an environmental and social basis for the personality and its disorders.
Born in Blankenese, Schleswig-Holstein, Prussia, Horney studied medicine at Freiburg, Göttingen, and Berlin, taking her M.D. degree from the last in 1911. After a period of medical practice, she became interested in psychoanalysis, studied with Karl Abraham, a disciple of Sigmund Freud. From 1915–20, she engaged in clinical and outpatient psychiatric work in Berlin, and, in 1920, she joined the teaching staff of the newly founded Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute.
Horney’s theories questioned some traditional Freudian views and developed her own theories of sexuality and the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis. She is credited with founding feminist psychology in response to Freud’s theory of penis envy. She also disagreed with Freud about inherent differences in the psychology of men and women, and she traced such differences to society and culture rather than biology.
In 1932, Horney went to the U.S. to become an associate director of the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago. She moved to New York City in 1934 and returned to private practice and teach. Her primary theoretical works include The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937,) New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939,) Our Inner Conflicts (1945,) and Neurosis and Human Growth (1950.)
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The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization.
—Karen Horney
Topics: Perfection
Is not the tremendous strength in men of the impulse to creative work in every field precisely due to their feeling of playing a relatively small part in the creation of living beings, which constantly impels them to an overcompensation in achievement?
—Karen Horney
Topics: Creativity
Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.
—Karen Horney
Topics: Action, Worry, Self-Control
Psychoanalysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.
—Karen Horney
Topics: Life
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