Karen Horney Essay

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Karen Horney was a pioneering theorist in personality, psychoanalysis, and "feminine psychology". She was born on September 16, 1885 in Hamburg, Germany. She had problems in her childhood, which lead her to be depressed. These problems and her low self-esteem lead her to do extremely well in school. After the death of her Stepmother in 1911, she decided to focus her studies on psychoanalysis. In 1915, she followed Freudian analysis with Karl Abraham. Horney decided to bring patients in for analysis in 1919 and starting working at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Clinic and Institute. She work there until 1932 and then she joined the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. Her main theory came from the difficult and depressed time she had in 1923. Her husband was developing a disease and then his brother died, causing her to become really depressed and thinking of committing suicide. She focused that hard time into what now, she is most known for. After her hard few years, in 1930 she developed theories about the importance of sociocultural factors in human development. After this, she moved from Germany to New York and her career flourished. She started off by writing a book that focused on the Freudian views of neuroses. The idea of Neurosis, which is a "psychic disturbance brought by fears and defenses against these fears, and by attempts to find compromise solutions for conflicting tendencies", according to her and other psychologists. Her idea of neurosis and psychoanalysis involving inner conflicts is one of the best theories of in this field. Her theory was related to her life and how she dealt with the difficult times she encountered. Neurosis is how people cope and have control over interpersonal issues that happen day to day, again according to Horney. Another theory she addresses is the idea of personality is psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is the method of

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