FEMININE PSYCHOLOGY OF BK III C

KAREN HORNEY 2021

FEMININE PSYCHOLOGY OF BK III C
KAREN HORNEY 2021

Goals of our learning today

• To widen our knowledge on the

psychodynamic, especially Feminine
psychology of Karen Horney; its origin,
theory and approach to the psychotherapy.
• By having this theoretical comprehension, we
will be able discern how to apply this
approach to cases in the school, mental
health and industrial setting.
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OUT LINE OF THE CLASS

1. Introduction
2. Definitions
3. Bibliography of Karen Horney
4. Karen Horney Views of Human
5. Feminine Psychology Approach and Techniques
6. Summary
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1. Introduction

• Karen Horney is unique and unparalleled in personality theory. She

has the distinction of being the only woman whose theory is
detailed in personality textbooks. Horney is known as a neo-
Freudian for her revision of Freudian thought; a social
psychological theorist for her emphasis on cultural and social
influences; a humanist for her holistic view and emphasis on
self-realization; and a feminist for her development of a
feminine psychology.
• She was a founder of the Association for the Advancement of
Psychoanalysis, founder, and dean of the American Institute
for Psychoanalysis, a training institute. She was a teacher who
could simplify the most difficult concepts; a therapist with deep
human involvement; Editor of the American journal of
Psychoanalysis; a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association; a
regular contributor to scientific sessions
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2. Definition according to APA

• Feminist psychology an approach to psychological issues that

emphasizes the role of the female perspective in thought,
action, and emotion in the life of the individual and in society.
It is seen by its proponents as an attempt to counterbalance
traditional male-oriented and male-dominated psychology, as well
as a model for similar approaches.
• Femininity complex in psychoanalytic theory, a man’s envy of
women’s procreative powers that has its roots in the young boy’s
envy of the mother’s body. Some psychoanalysts see the
femininity complex as the male counterpart to the female
castration complex and penis envy.
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• Feminist therapy an eclectic approach to psychotherapy based

conceptually in feminist political analyses and scholarship on
the psychology of women and gender. In this orientation, the
ways in which gender and gendered experiences inform people’s
understanding of their lives and the development of the distress
that serves as a catalyst for seeking therapy are central. Race,
class, sexual orientation, age cohort, and ability, as they interact
with gender, are explored.
• Feminist therapy attempts to create an egalitarian therapeutic
relationship in which intentional efforts are made by the
therapist to empower and define the client as an authority
equal in value to the therapist. Feminist therapy can be
indicated for both female and male clients.
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3. Biography of Karen Horney

1) Family
• Karen Danielsen Horney was born on 16 September 1885 in Blankenese,
Germany, near Hamburg.
• Karen father, Berndt Wackels Danielsen (1836–1910), was Norwegian but
had German citizenship. He was a ship's captain in the merchant marine,
and a Protestant traditionalist. Her mother, Clotilde, née van Ronzelen (1853–
1911), known as "Sonni", was also Protestant, of Dutch origin. She was said to be
more open-minded than Berndt, and yet she was "depressed, irritable, and
domineering toward Karen.
• Karen's elder brother was also named Berndt, and Karen cared for him
deeply. She also had four elder half-siblings from her father's previous
marriage. However, there was no contact between the children of her father's
two marriages.
• According to Horney's adolescent diaries her father was "a cruel disciplinary
figure," who also held his son Berndt in higher regard than Karen
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• From the age of nine Karen became ambitious and somewhat rebellious. She
felt that she could not become pretty, and instead decided to vest her energies
into her intellectual qualities.
• In 1904, when Karen was 19, her mother left her father (without divorcing him),
taking the children with her.
• Through her fellow student Carl Müller-Braunschweig—who later became a
psychoanalyst—she met the business student Oskar Horney. They married in
1909. The couple moved to Berlin together, where Oskar worked in industry while
Karen continued her studies.Within the space of one year, Karen gave birth to
her first child and lost both of her parents. She entered psychoanalysis to help
herself cope. Her first analyst was Karl Abraham in 1910, and then she moved to
Hans Sachs as her therapist.
• Karen and Oskar had three daughters. Their first child, Brigitte, was born in
1911; Marianne was born in 1913; and Renate, the youngest of their three
daughters, was born in 1916
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2) Education
• Karen decision to study medicine came at about the age of 12,
reportedly because of a favorable impression made by a “nice
country doctor” (Rubins, 1978). Horney as saying, “If I couldn’t be
beautiful, I decided I would be smart.” Her intellectual ability did
impress her mother, who encouraged her. Her father on the other hand
did not approve of education for women
• Horney kept diaries beginning at the age of thirteen. These journals
showed Horney's confidence in her path for the future. She considered
becoming a doctor, even though, at that time, women were not allowed
to attend universities.
• Against her parents' wishes, Horney at the age of 21, she entered
medical school in 1906 in the University of Freiburg, the first
institutions in Germany to enroll women in medical courses—with
higher education only becoming available to women in Germany in 1900.
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• By 1908, Horney had transferred to the University of Gottingen and

then transfer to the University of Berlin and graduating as an M.D.
in 1913.
• In the year 1923, Horney's brother died of a pulmonary infection and
Oscar Horney her husband company has collapse and create economical
difficulties for the family. Both events contributed to a worsening of
Horney's mental health. She entered into a second period of deep
depression; she swam out to sea during a vacation and considered
committing suicide.
• In 1926, Horney and her husband separated; they would divorce in
1937. She and her three daughters moved out of Oskar's house. Oskar
had proven to be very similar to Horney's father, with an authoritarian
personality. After studying more psychoanalytic theory, Horney
regretted having allowed her husband to rule over his children when
they were younger.
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3) Work
• Horney’s professional life can be seen as consisting of two phases: (1)
her years in Germany when she reinterpreted and refined
psychoanalytic concepts and began to establish a feminine psychology;
and (2) her years in America when she concluded her major work
• First stage Germany: During Horney’s early career years, she gained
professional experience by working at the Berlin-Lankwitz
Sanitarium, a psychiatric clinic, for three years 1911-1914 with Dr.
Herman Oppenheimer at his neurological institute for one year; and with
Dr. Karl Bonhoeffer on her dissertation.
• During World War I (1914-18) she worked in a military
neuropsychiatric hospital.
• In 1919 Horney began her private practice as a “Specialist in
Psychoanalysis” and by 1920 was responsible for curriculum and training
at the Psychoanalytic Institute of the Berlin Society headed by Max
Eitingon. She had been an instructor at the Institute since 1918
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• In 1920, Horney became one of the founding member of the Berlin

Psychoanalytic Institute., then took up a teaching position within the
Institute. She helped design and eventually directed the Society's
training program, taught students, and conducted psychoanalytic
research. She also saw patients for private psychoanalytic sessions,
and continued to work at the hospital. Karen Horney was the only
woman among the Institute’s six founders and the first woman to teach
classes there. Her classes included regular case seminars, in which she
would discuss in detail a therapeutic patient’s symptoms, diagnosis, and
treatment, using them as examples to teach how psychoanalysis works.
• One of her students was Fritz Perls, who later developed Gestalt
therapy, an analysis technique focusing on the present rather than the
past.
• At the International Congress held in Berlin in 1922, Horney presented a
paper entitled, ”The Genesis of the Castration Complex in Women,”
challenging some of Freud’s concepts. Ironically, Freud himself
chaired the session.
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• Second stage - America: Two years after moving to Chicago at the year of 1934,
Horney relocated to Brooklyn. Brooklyn was home to a large Jewish community,
including a growing number of refugees from Nazi Germany, and psychoanalysis
thrived there. It was in Brooklyn that Horney became friends with analysts such
as Sullivan and Eric Fromm.
• In 1937, she published The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, which had wide
popular readership. By 1941, Horney was Dean of the American Institute of
Psychoanalysis, a training institute for those who were interested in Horney's own
organization, the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. She founded
this organization after becoming dissatisfied with the generally strict, orthodox
nature of the prevailing psychoanalytic community.
• She also founded a journal, the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. She taught
at the New York Medical College and continued practicing as a psychiatrist until her
death in 1952.
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• Second stage - America: Two years after moving to Chicago at the year of 1934,
Horney relocated to Brooklyn. Brooklyn was home to a large Jewish community,
including a growing number of refugees from Nazi Germany, and psychoanalysis
thrived there. It was in Brooklyn that Horney became friends with analysts such
as Sullivan and Eric Fromm.
• In 1937, she published The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, which had wide
popular readership. By 1941, Horney was Dean of the American Institute of
Psychoanalysis, a training institute for those who were interested in Horney's own
organization, the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. She founded
this organization after becoming dissatisfied with the generally strict, orthodox
nature of the prevailing psychoanalytic community.
• She also founded a journal, the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. She taught
at the New York Medical College and continued practicing as a psychiatrist until her
death in 1952.
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4. Karen Horney Theories

Root Of Feminine Psychology
• Experience of inequality of love and care from her parents toward
her and Benedict, as well as the different parental type of her father
and mother.
• Karen Horney began keeping a diary at the age of 13. Four years
later, as romance falling in love with Schorschi, entered her life,
its pages filled with poetry, meditations, private ramblings that soared
with hope and ecstasy, then plummeted into despair and loneliness.
• Through each romance, Karen was sharpening her young woman’s
understanding of human behavior. She observed, analyzed, and wrote
in her diary the twists and turns of emotion that she sensed in
herself, the responses that she saw in others and the meanings that
she thought they might hold.
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Karen Departure from Freud

• Firmly grounded in the Berlin psychoanalytic establishment, Horney began to take issue
with fellow analysts’ ideas, especially their ideas about the psychology of women. The
first hint that she would break with Freud and his followers on this subject came in 1922,
when she presented a paper at an international meeting of psychoanalysts.
• In her book, New Ways in Psychoanalysis Horney criticize the idea of Freud, At heart, she
took issue with Freud’s belief that all adult psychological problems were directly caused by
things that happened in infancy and, further, that most of those early life experiences
stemmed from the infant’s sexual attachments to the mother. For her, many kinds of
interactions throughout the course of one’s life—in infancy, childhood, adolescence, and
adulthood; with parents, siblings, friends, and fellow workers—influenced personality and
behavior.
• In short, Karen Horney concluded, an individual’s life should be viewed as a lifelong
accumulation, a more complex developmental process, and not merely a repetition of
feelings and attachments dating from infancy.
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1. Feminine Psychology
1) Introduction
• Feminist-informed counseling practice emerged from the civil rights and social change
movements of the 1960s and engendered awareness of women as an oppressed group in
U.S. culture. Historically there are tree waves in the feminist movement:
• The first wave spanned the 19th century to the early 20th century. Middle-
class women in the 1830s formed charitable and benevolent societies to help
prostitutes and the destitute.
• The second wave of feminism in the United States began in the 1960s and continued
until the 1990s. Feminists advocated and argued for issues such as abortion,
domestic violence, discrimination, day care, and other issues relevant to women.
• The third wave of feminism started in 1990 and continues today. With roots in black
feminist work, this wave is considered tremendously diverse, with no one
philosophical stance; however, the third wave is viewed as a new feminist
discourse for understanding gender relations that takes into account the
inadequacies of the previous waves.
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2) Horney Feminine psychology

• Horney was one of the first analysts to challenge basic Freudian asserntions, such
as the psychoanalytic account of female development. Based on her own
understanding of herself as a woman, she took issue with the idea that women wish to
be men because of an inferiority (i.e., they lack a penis), of their external genitals
• Horney’s interest focused more and more on feminine psychology. She lectured to
professional and nonprofessional organizations on issues relating to women and
taught such courses as “Psychoanalysis and Gynecology. She developed a
reputation for being ”too outspoken” (Rubins, 1978). Although she did not regard
herself as such, she was regarded by her audiences ”as a living symbol of the new
emancipated female” (Cherry and Cherry, 1973)
• As early as 1922, Horney was beginning to examine and to question the classical
analytic view of women. She pointed out that the psychology of women was
described from men’s point of view, and as such, represented ‘‘...a deposit of the
desires and disappointments of men’’ (Horney, 1926, p. 56). She noted that women
unconsciously yield to these notions and that it is necessary to ‘‘try to free our minds
from this masculine mode of thought...’’ (p. 59).
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• In 1926 she compared the shortcomings of psychoanalysis with that of “our

entire masculine civilization” in her paper on ”The Flight from Womanhood.“
She accused psychoanalysis and those who developed its tenets of being
androcentric and overly concerned with men’s sexual apparatus and insufficiently
appreciative of women’s capacity for “pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood.
• Based on her clinical data, she would eventually assert that womb envy was at least
as likely to present a problem for men as penis envy did for women. She
emphasized in 1926 and in her later work the importance of cultural factors
on women’s “inferior position,” and that what women really envy is not the
penis but the superior position of men in society.
• Horney was also a pioneer in the discipline of feminine psychiatry. As one of the
first female psychiatrists, she was the first known woman to present a paper
regarding feminine psychiatry. Fourteen of the papers she wrote between
1922 and 1937 were amalgamated into a single volume titled Feminine
Psychology (1967).
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• Homey took issue with Freud's ideas on femininity. Her

argument developed in three stages.
1. In the first stage (represented by her first paper on
femininity, "On the Genesis of the Castration Complex in
Women," delivered at the Berlin Congress in 1922 and
published in 1924), Homey was trying to reform Freud's
ideas on women. At this time, she recognized the
authority of libido theory, but attempted to ameliorate
Freud's negative assessment of the female psyche by
distinguishing a "primary" penis envy from a "secondary"
form. While the former represents an early state of
pregenital envy, the latter is a defensive form arising from
Oedipal attachment and fear. A girl, thus, identifies with
her father as a way of escaping Oedipal danger.
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2. In the second stage--articles published between 1926

and 1933--Horney was much more polemical. During this
period, she argued that the concept of penis envy itself
is a consequence of male narcissism, fear of women,
and envy of the female capacity to bear children. While
she still maintained the principle of libido theory, her
radical reinterpretation of the concept of penis envy as
male projection exposed the ways in which libido theory
itself was premised on the devaluation of femininity.
3. In the third stage, Homey moved beyond the polemics
of libido theory to an alternative, cultural basis for
explaining femininity. During this period (1934-35),
Homey argued that the wider cultural devaluation of
women fosters a feminine sense of self riddled with
conflict and self-doubt. These ideas were most fully
developed in her concept of the "feminine type" ("The
Overvaluation of Love," 1934). This cultural approach came
to form the basis of her subsequent theoretical writings.
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• She effectively demonstrates that cultural factors and

approved sex roles encourage women to be dependent upon
men for love, prestige, wealth, care, and protection. This
dependence results in overemphasis on pleasing men, on the
feminine “cult of beauty and charm,” and on the
overevaluation of love (1 934).
• Karen wrote on 1935, There may appear certain fixed
idiologies concerning the ‘nature’ of women; that she is
innately weak, emotional, enjoys dependence, is limited in
capacity for independent work and autonomous thinking. It
is obvious that these ideologies function not only to reconcile
women to their subordinate role, but also to plant the belief
that it represents a fulfillment they crave, or an ideal for
which it is desirable to strive.
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3) Neurosis
• The Diagnostic Criteria from DSM-IV (of the American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p.
275) defines the character disorder in ways that are strikingly similar to the character
disorders described by Horney. The general definition emphasizes an enduring pattern
of inner conflict of cognitive, affective, interpersonal, and impulse control that
departs significantly from cultural expectations.
• The character disorder is made up of a tapestry of elements: the real self, alienation
from self, “shoulds,” idealized image, self-hate, claims, pride, anxiety, and
conflicts.
• Her expansive interest in the subject led her to compile a detailed theory of
neurosis, with data from her patients. Horney believed neurosis to be a continuous
process—with neuroses commonly occurring sporadically in a person's lifetime.
• Kare placed significant emphasis on parental indifference towards the child,
believing that a child's perception of events, as opposed to the parent's intentions,
is the key to understanding a person's neurosis. For instance, a child might feel a lack
of warmth and affection should a parent make fun of the child's feelings.
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• In Our lnner Conflicts (1945) Horney reaffirmed that ”neuroses are brought
about by cultural factors-which more specifically meant that neuroses were
generated by disturbances in human relationships” (p. 12). In Neurosis and Human
Growth (1950) she again confirmed that neurosis is “a disturbance in one’s relation
to self and to others” (p. 386).
• Neurosis should be understood in the context of culture, she said, and not only,
as strict Freudians would have it, the individual’s childhood history. Horney was
interested, as she stated in an article drawn from these lectures, in discovering
“whether and to what extent neuroses are moulded by cultural processes in
essentially the same way as ‘normal’ character formation is determined by these
influences.
• In The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1 937) Horney defined ”the
character structure which recurs in nearly all neurotic persons of our time in
one or another form” (p. vii). Horney found that a childhood marked by lack of
warmth and security and a feeling of isolation and helplessness in a potentially
hostile world can lead to neurosis in either males or females.
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• From her experiences as a psychiatrist, Horney named ten patterns of

neurotic needs. These ten needs are based upon things, which she thought
all humans require succeeding in life. Horney modified these needs
somewhat to correspond with what she believed were individuals' neuroses.
A neurotic person could theoretically exhibit all of these needs, though in
practice fewer than the ten here need to be present for a person to be
considered a neurotic.
• To combat anxiety and in an effort to gain security, the child develops
various coping strategies. These strategies become permanent parts of the
personality. The child may choose to (1) “move towards others” in a self-
effacing solution of love and compliance; or (2) “move against others” in an
expansive solution of mastery and aggression; or (3) ”move away from
others” in a resignation solution of freedom and detachment (Horney, 1942,
1945, 1950).
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• The ten needs, as set out by Horney, (classified

according to her so-called copying strategy) are as
follows:
• Moving Toward People (Compliance – Women )
1. The need for affection and approval; pleasing others and
being liked by them.
2. The need for a partner; one whom they can love and who
will solve all problems.
3. The need for social recognition; prestige and limelight.
4. The need for personal admiration; for both inner and
outer qualities—to be valued.
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• Moving Against People (Aggression - Men)

5. The need for power; the ability to bend wills and achieve control over
others—while most persons seek strength, the neurotic may be
desperate for it.
6. The need to exploit others; to get the better of them. To become
manipulative, fostering the belief that people are there simply to be
used.
• Moving Away from People (Withdrawal)
7. The need for personal achievement; though virtually all persons wish
to make achievements, as with No. 3, the neurotic may be desperate
for achievement.
8. The need for self-sufficiency and independence; while most desire
some autonomy, the neurotic may simply wish to discard other
individuals entirely.
9. The need for perfection; while many are driven to perfect their lives
in the form of well-being, the neurotic may display a fear of being
slightly flawed.
10. Lastly, the need to restrict life practices to within narrow borders;
to live as inconspicuous a life as possible.
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4) Theory of self
• Horney conceptualizes three versions of the self: real, ideal, and actual.
• The real self refers to the panoply of possibilities existing within each
person, including temperament, talents, capacities, and predispositions.
This is the self that is the source of values, a healthy conscience, and a sense
of vitality. The real self, which is a ‘‘possible self,’’ cannot develop fully
without a positive environment.
• The ideal self arises in response to the anxiety generated by a
problematic environment. Horney refers to the pursuit of the ideal self as
‘‘the search for glory.’’ That search involves the need for perfection, neurotic
ambition, and, often, the need for vindictive triumph
• Finally, the actual self is the mixture of strengths and weaknesses,
strategies and strivings that describe the person’s current being in the
world. In a good situation, the real and actual selves are close to each other;
in a less positive situation, great disparities exist between the two
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5. Feminine Psychology Approach and Techniques

1) Basic tenets of Karen Horney Theory and Techniques
1. Character disorder originates in part from cultural elements
and distortions in interpersonal relationships. Specific cultural
factors may determine an emphasis on certain character traits,
such as aggressive competitiveness in relationships, work, love, or
penis envy in women due to cultural chauvinism.
2. She rejects Freud’s Instinct Theory because aggression and
sexual pathology are caused by frustration of fundamental
needs for love, safety, and security and by an increase in
anxiety.
3. Mankind has the ability as well as the desire to evolve into a
reasonable human being. An individual can change and go on
changing as long as he lives. Inherent in man is a desire to fulfill
his given potentialities, a drive for self-realization.
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4. Character disorders always have basic anxiety as their cornerstone.

The helplessness or basic anxiety of the child leaves him or her
vulnerable with a conviction of being isolated and helpless in a possibly
unkind world. n Horney’s first book, The Neurotic Personality of Our
Time (1937), she declared that “anxiety is the dynamic center of
neurosis and thus we shall have to deal with it all the time”. She listed 3
fundamental “ways of escaping anxiety; rationalize it; deny it; avoid
thoughts, feelings, impulses and situations which might arouse it”
(Horney, 1937, pp. 47–48).
5. There is a need to value oneself and to be valued. Poor self-esteem
is a consequence of either under- or over-valuation of the self. This
leads to a specific idealized image by way of compensation.
6. Horney defined conflict broadly, seeing it as either a juxtaposition
between the real self versus the idealized image, the real self
versus the pride system, or the destructive forces versus the
constructive urges.
7. The treatment of the present in therapy is immeasurably more
effective than the focus on the past. This tenet is similar to the
focus on the present by cognitive therapists.
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2) Therapeutic Relationship
• The main task of psychoanalysis is to eliminate resistances, which are
activated mainly by getting close to a repressed complex and by the
dynamics of the therapist-patient relationship. Horney regarded this
relationship as of the utmost importance and devoted much of her essay to an
examination of it. Although she continued to maintain the centrality of the
therapist-patient relationship, her conception of its dynamics underwent
considerable change as her ideas evolved, and it is useful to measure that
change from the orthodox position with which she began.
• Patients should develop autonomy and the capacity to make decisions for
themselves. The analyst "will serve the patient better by limiting himself to
simply helping the patient clarify the motives that drive him toward this or
that decision." Horney later developed a more collaborative model of
therapy, but in this paper she approved of Freud's advice for avoiding
transference difficulties, such as sitting behind the patient and not
sharing one's own inner experiences.
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3) Role of therapist and client

• Horney describes the therapist’s tasks as observation, understanding,
interpretation, help with resistances, and something called ‘‘general human
help,’’ a phrase that refers to an attitude of friendliness and serious interest
that helps the patient to regard his/her own growth as important and to
accept his/her less than perfect self.
• She describes the special nature of the analyst’s attention: it must be
wholehearted. ‘‘...It can be productive only if he enters into the task
completely and without reservation... letting his own emotional reactions
come into play.’’ She goes on to argue that analysts should not try to suppress
their emotions because they play an important role in the therapeutic process;
indeed, analysts’ feelings are ‘‘the most alive part’’ of themselves.
• The patient’s tasks are to express him/herself as completely as possible,
to become aware of unconscious driving forces and their effects, and to
change those patterns of behavior that disturb the patient and others.
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4) Goals of therapy
• Freud had emphasized the removal of neurotic symptoms and
increasing the capacity for enjoyment and work. Sullivan’s
goal was to help the patient to establish good human
relationships. Horney added to these the improvement of
relations not only with others but also with the self, as well
as greater freedom, inner independence, and self-
realization in every way (Horney, 1956a)
• The goal of psychotherapy is to help the patient come to
terms with his or her predominant coping strategy, then
reduce that behavior so the person can more clearly know and
express the “real self.”
• The purpose of therapy, she suggested, was to lessen the
patient’s anxiety to the extent that he or she is able to give
up the neurotic trends and abandon the drive to actualize
the idealized self, thus permitting further self-realization
and growth to take place (Paris, 1999b)
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5) Some Techniques
• As student of Sigmud Freud, Karen in her therapy employed
techniques used by in classical psychoanalytic such as free
association, Analytic, interpretation, dream analysis, and
transference and counter transference wit the focus on
interpersonal relation.
• Orientation and exploration: The therapist, give some orientation in
the beginning of the therapy process. Exploration of the effect of
past to the present situation of client.
• Role of Fantasy: Actions and verbalizations are creatively first
begun with fantasy. Horney (1950a) recognizes that fantasy initiates
and builds the idealized image. In the process of constructing the
idealized image, reality is played with, altered, and falsified. Horney
(1950a, p. 38) again asserts a basic premise of her theory and
therapeutic technique. It is her recognition that the real self strives
toward self-realization. By contrast, the pursuit of glory, an outcome
of the action of the idealized self, opposes the real self’s
determination to grow.
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KAREN HORNEY 2021

• Self–hate: Horney (1950a, p. 116) suggests that the essential

content of the process is frequently externalized, that is,
seen as if other people hate, dislike, and/or do not respect
the patient instead of the patient registering that he is the
one who really hates himself. Horney (p. 118) lists six
manifestations of self-hate: (1) compulsive mandates on the
self, (2) unforgiving self-accusations, (3) self-contempt, (4)
self-frustrations, (5) self-torments, and (6) self-destructive
• Role of hope: The therapist, like the patient, must also have
hope with regard to his own continued growth as a person in
addition to having hope about the patient positively changing.
• Recapitulation: The extension of the principle of
recapitulation to a child’s mental and behavioral development.
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KAREN HORNEY 2021

• What Karen Horney offers us is a glowingly human set of constructs—constructs that allow
us to situate our patients in relation to their inner and outer worlds within a positive,
growth-minded and open system. Her conception of the person affords the individual his
or her unique, even if yet unrealized qualities, while recognizing the more common ways
in which people arrange themselves to accommodate otherwise shattering experiences in
6. Summary

early life.
• Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Karen Horney’s work is that it was conceived
and propounded by a woman in a time and place that were professionally and culturally
steeped in a male-dominated paradigm. To think these thoughts and then to proclaim
them publicly were extraordinary acts of imagination and courage.
• To some degree the hope that Karen Horney expressed on her deathbed has been fulfilled.
Between 1970 and 1991, the U.S. government reported, the number of women practicing
medicine in the United States quadrupled, from 7.7% of all physicians in 1970 to 30% in
1991. For the first time, in 2003 female medical school applicants outnumbered male in
the United States.