Karen Horney (1885-1952)

Professional Life
Karen Horney was born in Blankenese, Germany in 1885. She decided at a young age to concentrate her attention on developing her intellectual and academic skills. When she was barely a teenager, she suffered her first episode of depression, a challenge she faced several times throughout her life. When Karen was 21, she enrolled in the University of Freiburg Medical School in Germany. She transferred from there to the University of Gottingen and ultimately graduated from the University of Berlin in 1913. Horney met her husband, Oskar Horney, while she was in medical school. The two had three daughters together but that did not prevent Horney from continuing her career in psychoanalysis.

Horney began working with the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Berlin in 1920. She lectured regularly while there and within a few years, she entered into another depression after the decline of her husband’s health and the death of her only brother. After suffering through a prolonged depressive state, Horney left her husband in 1926 and eventually moved to the United States. Horney ended up in Brooklyn, which was home to a large Jewish German population. There she met Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm. Once in the United States, Horney took a position as the Associate Director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. It was during this time that she began to explore her own theories on personality and neurosis. She later became the Dean of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis and funded her own organization based on her theories, the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. Horney’s beliefs differed from traditional Freudian theories, and this led to her departure from that position. Upon her resignation, Horney began a teaching job at the New York Medical College and maintained her private practice until she died in 1952.

Contribution to Psychology
Horney is known for her theory on neurosis. She believed that neurosis was not a condition, rather a process which occurred throughout one’s life. Although she disagreed with her contemporaries about neurosis, she did agree with them with regard to childhood influences. She theorized that a person’s neurosis is a result of their childhood perceptions of their own parents. Horney categorized ten basic needs that she believed were essential for someone to succeed. She grouped them into three types of needs:

1. Compliance Needs
2. Aggression Needs
3. Attachment Needs

Horney is also recognized for her contribution to feminine psychiatry. She believed that understanding women’s behaviors in a psychological context was a neglected topic. She thought that the self-actualization of a woman was being undermined by her social valuation and cultural position. She believed that women gained their sense of accomplishment through childbirth and family bonds where as a man overcompensated for his inability to give birth by achieving more in the business world. Horney published several books on women’s relationships with their spouses and with their children. She was a staunch proponent of psychoanalysis and believed that the solution to finding a full and rich life was self-awareness.

Books by Karen Horney

• The Neurotic Personality of our Time (1937)
• New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939)
• Self-Analysis (1942)
• Our Inner Conflicts (1945)
• Are You Considering Psychoanalysis? (1946)
• Neurosis and Human Growth (1950)
• The Collected Works of Karen Horney (1950)
• The Adolescent Diaries of Karen Horney (1980)
• The Unknown Karen Horney: Essays on Gender, Culture, and Psychoanalysis (2000)