Karen Horney Essay

4084 Words17 Pages
Karen Horney Horney, Karen - 1885–1952, American psychiatrist, b. Germany, M.D. Univ. of Berlin, 1913. She married Oscar Horney in 1909. Prior to her arrival (1932) in the United States, she was secretary of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, where she taught for 12 years. Associate director (1932–34) of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Horney then came to New York City, where she lectured at the New School for Social Research. She deviated from orthodox Freudian analysis by emphasizing environmental and cultural, rather than biological, factors in the genesis of neurosis. Anxiety, she held, is created by anything that jeopardizes a person's means of gaining security. The neurotic's rigid adherence to his safety devices protects him in some ways but renders him helpless toward other possible dangers. To further her work based on these beliefs, she founded (1941) and became dean of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis. Her works include The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937), Self-Analysis (1942), Our Inner Conflicts (1945), and Neurosis and Human Growth (1950). Karen Horney was a pioneering theorist in personality, psychoanalysis, and "feminine psychology". Biography Horney was born near Hamburg, Germany on September 16, 1885, the second child of Clotilde and Berndt Wackels Danielson. Although her father often bought her gifts and took her on exciting trips, she felt ignored by him. She thought that he was too strict and that he favored her older brother, Berndt. Growing up was not an easy process for Karen. She battled depression from the time she was nine, stemming from the crush that she had on her brother followed by the rejection she felt when he rejected her love. At around the same time, she became very ambitious and rebellious. As she did not see herself as an attractive girl, she was certain that
Open Document