Karen Horney

Psychoanalyst

  • Born: September 16, 1885
  • Birthplace: Eilbek, near Hamburg, Germany
  • Died: December 4, 1952
  • Place of death: New York, New York

German-born American psychoanalyst

Horney was a leading psychoanalyst and psychologist who contributed to understanding the psychology of women, emphasized the role of sociocultural factors in producing neurosis, and developed a new noninstinctivist psychoanalytic theory. Significantly, she disputed the basic principles and theories of Sigmund Freud, arguing that neuroses and personality disorders were the results of environmental and social conditions, not of biological drives.

Area of achievement Psychiatry and psychology

Early Life

Karen Horney was the daughter of Berndt Henrik Wackels Danielsen, a sea captain with the Hamburg-American Lines, who was a Norwegian by birth but later became a naturalized German, and Clothilde Marie Van Ronzelen Danielsen, of Dutch background. Clothilde, or Sonni, was sixteen years younger than her husband when she married him. Danielsen had four grown children from a previous marriage who did not like his new wife and the new children that came later. Berndt Danielsen, an intensely religious man, believed in a patriarchal family structure with women in subservient roles. His emotional presence in the home was felt by everyone. Sonni was a religious freethinker, was more educated, liberal, and cultured than her husband, and advocated a greater independence for women.

Horney (then called Danielsen) was born as Hamburg was coming into the industrial age. Just ten years after her birth, Hamburg Harbor became the third largest international port in the world. Horney traveled with her father and experienced life in different cultures, which added to her understanding of human nature. She was an avid reader, and her life was greatly augmented and embellished by her own imagination. It may have been her imagination that led her to envision a path for herself that was not common for any German female of her time. In her imagination, she thought of herself as a doctor, even though, in 1899, there was not one university in Germany that admitted women. Germany was, however, changing quickly enough to accommodate her. She attended the first gymnasium for girls in Hamburg in 1900. In the spring of 1906, Horney graduated from the gymnasium, and on Easter Sunday of the same year, she boarded a train bound for the University of Freiburg to begin university life and her medical studies. The University of Freiburg became the first university in Germany to graduate a woman, even though female professionalism was considered unnatural. On October 30, 1909, while still a medical student, Horney married Oskar Horney, a student of political science and economics. Oskar was that rare man in Berlin who was able to accept (or tolerate) ambition in a wife. They had three daughters, Brigitte (born in 1911), Marianne (born in 1913), and Renate (born in 1915). Horney received her M.D. from the University of Berlin in 1915.

Life’s Work

After passing her medical exams, Horney worked for the influential Berlin psychiatrist Hermann Oppenheim, as an assistant in his clinic. It was there that she learned of psychoanalysis and began analysis with Karl Abraham, the only trained Freudian analyst in Berlin. Once Horney had discovered psychoanalysis, it became the intellectual and emotional focal point of her life. Unfortunately, psychoanalysis was frowned on by the medical establishment. Understanding the stigma associated with psychoanalysis, Horney continued to specialize in psychiatry during the day, but after hours she pursued Freudian psychoanalysis as a patient and a student. She was decidedly cautious about discussing Sigmund Freud’s ideas in and around Berlin and in the psychiatric clinics where she trained. While writing her doctoral dissertation, she was extremely careful not to discuss Freudian ideas. Everything about her dissertation suggests that she was a faithful and serious disciple of her psychiatric profession. On receiving her medical degree in 1915, she was from that point on a psychoanalyst. She was no longer hesitant to discuss Freudian ideas. She became more controversial and even more convinced of the therapeutic value of psychoanalysis. She took her first patients in psychoanalysis in 1919 and became actively involved with the Berlin Psychoanalytic Clinic and Institute for the next twelve years.

The relationship between Horney and her husband became strained and began deteriorating. Their lifestyle had been prosperous, but with the economic crisis of 1923, Oskar was forced to declare personal bankruptcy. He later developed a severe neurological illness that caused a radical change in his personality. The Horneys separated in 1926 and were divorced in 1937. After her divorce, Horney channeled most of her energy into professional writing. Over the next six years, she was to publish a total of fourteen professional papers. The years between 1926 and 1932 were among the most productive of her life. Her friends, busy practice, and active involvement in institute affairs made Horney a central figure in the beginnings of the Berlin Institute. Her most important contribution to the future of psychoanalysis grew out of her teaching role. She was a member of the education committee at the institute and a member of the education committee of the International Psychoanalytic Association beginning in 1928.

Horney made contributions to feminine psychology over a thirteen-year period from 1923 to 1936. She did not like the tenets of Freudian psychology, which described female development from a male-oriented, phallocentric viewpoint and made it appear that women had an inferior status. She put emphasis on interpersonal attitudes and on social influences in determining women’s feelings, relations, and roles. Six of her papers on marital problems were published between 1927 and 1932.

In 1932, Horney accepted the position of associate director of the new Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, offered to her by its director, Franz Alexander, a former Berlin colleague. She looked forward to the United States and greater freedom of expression than she was allowed in Berlin. She remained in Chicago for only two years because she clashed with Alexander and the practices he was introducing at the institute. She had already begun to emphasize cultural factors in female psychology, which departed from Freud’s original ideas. Alexander regarded her departure from orthodox Freudianism as revolutionary. In 1934, she moved to New York City, built an analytic practice, and taught at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and the New School for Social Research. During this time, she produced her major theoretical works, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937), which discussed the role of social practices in causing neuroses, and New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939), spelling out her differences with Freudian theory. Horney had a strong personality, and she tended to resist all attempts at control and regulation. These traits, combined with her expressed desire that the New York Psychoanalytic Institute should become a progressive institution instead of a rigid teaching institution, caused friction between her and the institute’s president, Lawrence Kubie. He did not like her departure from Freud’s original ideas, and in the end he and others required that she return to Freud or teach her ideas elsewhere. She was singled out as a troublemaker and demoted from instructor to lecturer.

Shortly after this demotion, in April of 1941, she and four other analysts offered their letters of resignation to the secretary of the New York Psychoanalytic Society. These five then started their own organization, the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. The first volume of the organization’s journal, the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, listed fifteen “charter members” in New York and a handful in other cities. The organization offered thirteen courses for students and interested physicians. The curriculum was to train psychiatrists for clinical practice in psychoanalysis. Horney’s third book, Self-Analysis, was published in 1942. After her break from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and Freudian orthodoxy, she found herself in enormous demand as a psychoanalyst. Self-Analysis was ignored or reviled by every popular and psychoanalytic publication. Many did not review it at all, an indication of the power of the New York Psychoanalytic Society. Her last two books, Our Inner Conflicts (1945) and Neurosis and Human Growth (1950), were also not reviewed. Horney’s new alternative institution never gained official national recognition. Her work continued to be overlooked and minimized within psychoanalysis because of this split.

In her later years, Horney took to religion, especially Zen Buddhism. She met with D. T. Suzuki, the author of Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture (1949). She, Suzuki, and some of her friends planned a trip to Japan to experience Zen life at first hand. The trip to Japan was to be one of the happiest adventures in Horney’s life. Suzuki led Horney and her friends for a month on a tour of some of the most important Zen monasteries in Japan. Within two months after her return, she suddenly became ill and was admitted to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. She was diagnosed as having cancer of the gallbladder. During her second week in the hospital, her condition rapidly worsened. On December 4, 1952, Horney died. She was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, a quiet suburb of Westchester, north of New York City.

Significance

Horney disputed basic Freudian principles, Freud’s psychoanalysis theories, and the therapeutic results of the application of these theories. She believed that neuroses and personality disorders were the results of environmental and social conditions, not of biological drives. She challenged Freud’s libido theory and his theories of psychosexual development. She also contended that feminine psychology could not be understood unless the masculine bias in psychoanalysis and other fields was lifted. There was a clear need to formulate a masculine and feminine psychology to prepare the way for her whole-person philosophy.

Horney was considered an early feminist, although she was not allied with any political movement. She fought for gender equality and praised women for being homemakers and mothers. She also believed that women should have the freedom to have careers.

Since her death, many of her followers have continued to praise her theories and to apply them to new problems and conditions. Her ideas have entered the mainstream of psychology and some have been rediscovered and appropriated by other schools. Her theories regarding the causes and dynamics of neurosis and her later revision of Freud’s theory of personality have remained influential. Her analysis of humankind allowed for a broader scope of development and coping than did the determinism of Freud.

Bibliography

Alexander, Franz, Samuel Eisenstein, and Martin Grotjohn, eds. “Karen Horney: The Cultural Emphasis.” In Psychoanalytic Pioneers. New York: Basic Books, 1966. This work tells the histories of the pioneers in psychoanalysis, describes their works, and relates the influence of these works.

Eckardt, Marianne. “Karen Horney: A Portrait.” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 65, no. 2 (June, 2005): 95-101. A brief but adequate article that focuses on Horney’s life and career.

Kelman, Harold, ed. Feminine Psychology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967. A collection of Horney’s papers on women and the intersections of “the feminine” and psychology. Many of the papers were previously unavailable in English.

Quinn, Susan. A Mind of Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney. New York: Summit Books, 1987. The first full-scale biography of Horney. A fine source that covers the full range of her life and work.

Rubins, Jack L. Karen Horney: Gentle Rebel of Psychoanalysis. New York: Dial Press, 1978. Examines the life story of Horney from the persecution of the Jewish psychoanalysts during the early Nazi period to the analytic classes in Chicago and New York.

Sayers, Janet. Mothers of Psychoanalysis: Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. The mother-centered view of psychoanalysis constituted a direct challenge to the discipline, which was once patriarchal and phallocentric. The story of the revolution in psychoanalysis is told here through the biographies of its first women architects.

Westkott, Marcia. The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986. Westkott presents a social-psychological theory that explains women’s personality development as a consequence of growing up in a social setting and in a culture in which they are devalued.

1901-1940: 1904: Freud Advances the Psychoanalytic Method; 1930’s: Jung Develops Analytical Psychology.