The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 65, No. 2, June 2005 ( 2005) DOI: 10.

1007/s11231-005-3620-6

THE 120TH ANNIVERSARY, KAREN HORNEY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1885

KAREN HORNEY: A PORTRAIT

Marianne Horney Eckardt
For the occasion on June 6, 2004, when the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society honored Karen Horney by placing a memorial plaque on the house at Sophie Charlottenstrasse 15, where she lived from 1917 to 1926.* Dear Colleagues, Friends, Ladies, and Gentlemen: Renate and I gladly crossed the ocean to join you in this ceremony, honoring our mother. We are full of appreciation for your active interest in honoring the group of psychoanalysts that once enriched Berlins intellectual avant garde and then emigrated to various parts of the globe. We thank you for your generous hospitality. In spite of economic and political turmoil, the period between 1920 and 1930 was a cultural phenomenon. One cannot appreciate the spirit or the soul of the early Berlin psychoanalytic pioneers detached from this unique exuberant atmosphere of the Weimar Republic, when a vibrant cultural energy exploded, sparkled, and for 10 years nourished the arts and the lives of people and made Berlin into a Mecca of attraction. What happened in Berlin inuenced art and cultural life in the Western world for the rest of that century. It was this spirit that gave the Berlin psychoanalytic community its very special avor, very distinct from the atmosphere in Freuds Vienna, where the psychoanalytic community was much more directly inuenced by the giant shadow of Freud. The enthusiastic Berlin community embraced psychoanalysis as a young science challenging its members towards further creative contributions. The spirit of the time embraced the breaking of traditions and conventions, and thus the Berlin analysts too viewed psychoanalysis as a force that would

*In the year 2004 memorial plaques honoring Max Eitingon, Siegfried Bernfeld, and Franz Alexander were placed on their former residences. The unveiling of each plaque was accompanied by a detailed account of the political and intellectual history of these early psychoanalytic pioneers in Berlin. This project was planned and organized by the Berlin psychoanalyst Dr. Regine Lockot. Address correspondence to Marienne Horney Eckardt, MD; e-mail: meck@fea.net. 95
0002-9548/05/0600-0095/1 2005 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

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FIG. 1. Entry to Karen Horneys home at Sophie Charlottenstrasse 15, Zehlendorf, Berlin. German text of the Karen Horney Memorial Plaque: Karen Horney Psychoanalytikerin und Artztin (16/09/1885 04/12/1952) lebte von 1909 bis 1932 in Berlin. Mitbergu nderin des Berliner Psychoanalytischen Institute. Als warmhherzige Lehranalytikerin und beliebte Dozentin geschatzt, kampfte sie um ihre perso nlicheVerwirklichung und ging ihren eigenen, neofreudianischen Weg, bei dem die Frauen zu ihrem besonderen Recht kommen sollten.Hier liebte sie mit ihre Mann, dem Wirtschafts und Staatswissenschaftler, Oskar Horney und ihren drei To chtern: Brigitte, Marianne und Renate. Sponsoren dieser Tafel: Psychoanalytiker und Freunde der Psychoanalyse 06.06.2004 English translation of the Horney plaque: Karen Horney Psychoanalyst and Medical Doctor 9/16/1885 to 12/4/1952. Karen Horney lived in Berlin from 1909 to 1932. She was one of the Founders of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. She was highly respected as a warm-hearted training analyst and a beloved professor; she fought for her own personal development and assured women their own rights by going her own Neo-Freudian way. She lived here with her husband, the economist and political scientist Oskar Horney, and their three daughters: Brigitte, Marianne and Renate. This Memorial Plaque is sponsored by psychoanalysts and friends of psychoanalysis, June 6, 2004.

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Fig. 2. Celebration of the unveiling of the Karen Horney Memorial Plaque on June 6, 2004. The photograph shows guests and participants at the event, organized by the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society. Dr. Marienne Horney Eckardt, one of the three daughters of Horney, a psychoanalyst herself, made the speech reproduced here, remembering her mother. Renate Horney Patterson, Horneys second daughter, was also present

free the human potential and allow it to unfold. The soil of the Berlin psychoanalytic community did not favor orthodoxy. Six analysts founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute in 1920, ve men and one woman: Karen Horney. Due to the generous contributions of Max Eitingon, the new Psychoanalytic Institute launched a polyclinic which gave free psychoanalytic therapy and thus a pool of patients for the candidates. The circle around Freud in Vienna tended towards an isolating elitism, while the members in Berlin were all involved in educative lectures to the community at large, to social workers, educators, and others. The Vienna group emphasized the inevitable tension between libido and civilization. Berlin saw psychoanalysis as liberator of human creative potentials. Karen Horney was certainly in the right place at the right time. She would never have blossomed in Vienna. She was endowed with the spirit of determined exploration from childhood on. She was a private person,

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but after her death in 1952 we, her daughters, discovered her diaries, which gathered dust, unexamined for a long time on one bookshelf or another, until Renate rediscovered them and met a mother we had never known. With much travail Renate turned them into a type-written manuscript and against Brigittes resistance but with my support succeeded in having them published. These diaries make fascinating reading. Karens rst entry, at age 13, tells us:
How I come to be years, and begins with Obertertia. . . . Once father has digested the monstrous ideas of sending his daughter to the Gymnasium, mother will talk to him further. He is approachable now. I wanted to tell you my experiences only on Sundays, Dear Diary, but I experience so much every day, that I just cannot save it up till Sunday. (Horney, 1980, p. 26)

However, she has to wait. She writes:

The uncertainty makes me sick. Why cant father make up his mind a little faster? He, who has flung out thousands for my stepbrother Enoch who is both stupid and bad, first turns every penny he is to spend on me ten times over in his fingers. And we did make it clear to him that he has to feed me only as long as I attend school.... He would like me to stay at home now, so we would dismiss our maid and I would do her work. He brings me almost to the point of cursing my good gifts. (p.26)

Her early questioning spirit is illustrated in this episode of trouble in her Bible class.
Something dreadful happened today. I am afraid my adored Herr Schulze is angry with me. It happened this way: we were going through the (so-called) proofs Paul cites of Christs resurrection, namely that he appeared to various people (after his death) and also to Paul. I dared express the view that Paul had been in an overwrought nervous condition and so imagined he saw this luminous vision. I implied that this was really no proof of Christs resurrection. (Horney, 1980, p. 25)

Herr Schulze ended the lesson abruptly and gave Karen a severe lecture. At age 18, she meets secondhand the question of free love. She doubts there is ethic in marriage, but approves the decision to give freely of oneself out of love. One of her conclusions is, Thou shalt free yourself from convention, from everyday morality, and shall think through the highest commands for thyself and act accordingly. Too much custom, too little morality" (p. 82). In view of her later writing, a diary is easy to explain. Its because I am enthusiastic about everything new, and I have decided now to carry this through so that in later years I can better remember the

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days of my youth" (p. 17). At age 15 (her mother is ill and unhappy, and so is she), she writes:
It is probably just as well that one cannot lift the veil of the future and so can go on hoping. Yet, I am always thinking about the future.... Earlier when I was in private school I did not think about the future at all. Then when I went to convent school, I wanted to be a teacher. Then I went beyond that, and wanted to studieren, I wanted to go right away to the Gymnasium for girls, in my thoughts I was already there, but I had not taken my father into account. My precious father forbade me any such plans once and for all. Of course, he can forbid me the Gymnasium, but the wish to study he cannot. My plan for the future is this. (p. 19)

She outlines her plan to rst pass the end examination, then go to Wolfenbuettel to study to become a teacher (which apparently did not necessitate the gymnasium), then be a teacher or tutor for two years while studying for the nal examination, which would allow her to enter medical school and, nally, to become a doctor. To appreciate the spirit of these plans, one has to realize that, in Hamburg, the gymnasium for girls had just been created, and just that year the University of Freiburg was the rst and only university that allowed women to enroll. The University of Berlins medical school did not accept women until 1908. Karen ends this entry with this determined note: You see, Dear Diary, Fate will have an easy time with me. I prescribe everything for it (p. 19). The diary is always treated as her best friend and addressed as Du. She apologizes to it when she has neglected her writing and she dialogues with it in the form of You might think," etc. A follow-up note shows that Fate is cooperating. My chances for the Gymnasium are getting better. I already know more about it. Its ve years and begins with Oberteria (9th grade). We dont need to know any Latin or mathematics. Once Father has digested the monstrous idea of sending his daughter to the Gymnasium, Mother will talk with him further. He is approachable now (p. 26). The following comment, made as a New year resolution, is of interest: Yes, I long for one more thing, to learn how to listen to the delicate vibrations of my soul, to be incorruptibly true to myself and fair to others, to nd in this way the right measure of my own worth" (p. 102). She prefers her own company to others, unless they are in tune with her. She hears complaints that she lacks group spirit, that she will not accommodate to the majority. She writes:
I do not see the sense of demanding in disputed cases that I should join the majority. Perhaps this fits in with my having absolutely no feeling for blood relationships. What do you think? Is this lack of esprit de corps a real lack on my part or is it justified? I think a weighing of interests should take place here:

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do the others lose relatively too much through my acting in my own way or does my gain outweigh their loss? (p. 206)

Horney was her own person. She was not then, nor later, a team person. Horney did enroll, in 1906, in one of the very few medical schools available for women. Freiburg was the rst university to accept women as students, in 1900. In 1906 Karen was one of 34 women entering medical school. (Of the total student body of 2,350 that year, 58 were women.) After two years in Freiburg, she continued her studies in Goettingen and then in Berlin. Her amazing self-chartered journey continues once she is in her nal years of medical school. She arrived in Berlin in 1909 and immediately decided that psychiatry was her next step on the way to becoming a psychoanalyst, even though psychoanalysis had barely arrived and had met with much hostility, especially in the psychiatric profession. Karl Abraham, the rst Berlin psychoanalyst, had arrived in the city late in 1907 and was still struggling to build a practice. A friend of Karens future husband was Karl Mueller-Braunschweig, who shared her interest, and both of them started analysis with Karl Abraham in 1910. She married in 1910 and had her rst daughter, Brigitte, in 1911 while taking her nal medical examinations. I arrived in 1913, hardly interrupting her psychiatric internship. Renate was born in 1916. My mothers professional life always had her wholehearted priority. During the 1920s she began to write her now well- known papers on feminine psychology (Horney, 1967). They are delightful to read. Her challenges of Freud on his views on feminine psychological development have the same tone as her challenge of her adored Herr Schulzes teaching of proofs of Christs resurrection. She asks, Why did Freud assume that women feel inferior to men because of the absence of a penis? Could it be male narcissism to believe that one-half of the human race is discontented with the sex assigned to it? She does not dispute the existence of penis envy but asks whether this could be due to social and cultural factors: a momentous and, at that time, a novel, even revolutionary, question. Her notion gained support from the writings of George Simmel, a sociologist, who wrote about the masculine bias that pervades Western culture, as evident in all of its manifestations, be it in law, morality, religion, or the sciences. The concept of a human being was equated with man, not with woman. So Horney asks how much of Freuds description of female development reects this one-sided cultural masculine perspective. This radical questioning is developed only slowly over the next ten years in many papers. Her questioning of Freuds theory about women was only the rst gauntlet she threw into the arena. She writes extensively about problems in marriage, questioning the monogamous ideal. She

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writes about the almost-inevitable power struggle of various causations in marriage. Foremost is the male bias of masculine superiority which expects the wife to play a subservient role. Then we bring into marriage unrealistic expectations from childhood for unqualied love and understanding, and further, marriage is apt to impede the growth or blossoming of native talents or inclinations or even suppress them. She really cannot envision a happy marriage; at best it is a compromise and requires much maturity on the part of both partners. Her own marriage dissolved in 1926. She left Berlin in 1932, accepting an offer by Franz Alexander to be Associate Director of the very rst psychoanalytic institute in the States, located in Chicago. The New York Institute opened about six months later, directed by Sandor Rado. She moved to New York two years later due to conicts with Franz Alexander. In New York she taught both at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute as well as at the New School for Social Research, a kind of free university that sought out the European intellectual and cultural elite that had escaped Hitler. The New School played a great role in Horneys emerging career. She was a brilliant popular lecturer, and she used these lectures to develop her new theories about neurotic development. Her rst two books were created by way of these lectures. Her second book, New Ways in Psychoanalysis, directly challenges Freuds various premises. The publication caused an uproar. She was no longer favored at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute nor by the International Psychoanalytical Association. Accompanied by other dissenters, she formed a new psychoanalytic society and institute, which then underwent two more schisms. The surviving institute, the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, has taught Karen Horneys school of thought. She died of cancer at the age of 67 in 1952.

REFERENCES Horney, K. (1967). In: H. Kelman (Ed.), Feminine psychology, W. W. Norton: New York. Horney, K. (1980). The adolescent diaries of Karen Horney, New York: Basic Books.