Karen Horney Danielsen was a German psychoanalyst who, in her late career, practiced in the United States. Early in her life, she dealt with depression. According to her, her father was a strict disciplinarian. A fact that made her closer to Berndt, her elder brother. Horney became depressed whenever he distanced himself from her. A problem that Karen dealt with throughout her life. Karen devoted herself to school, believing that she has decided to be smart if she could not be beautiful. Therefore, she started her medical school in 1906 and married Oskar Horney, a law student, in 1909. Karen became more depressed after her mother’s death in 1911, followed by her brother’s demise in 1023.
Karen Horney became a famous Neo-Freudian psychologist with her neurotic needs theory, her feminine psychology research, and her critic of emphasis that Freud put on the penis envy concept. Additionally, she made significant contributions to the self-psychology area, and she emphasized the critical role that self-psychology and self-help play in mental health. Unfortunately, she succumbed to death in New York City on December 4, 1952, at 67 years.
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Thesis Statement
Karen Horney is a German Psychologist whose life, education, and career in psychology reflect her determination to contribute to psychology. That was possible through theory development and engagement with other psychologists to better inform different aspects of psychology.
II. Body
Karen Horney was born on September 16, 1985, to Norwegian and Dutch parents. Her Father, Berndt Danielsen, was a Norwegian, but he had German citizenship. Her mother, Clotilde, on the hand, was also a protestant of Dutch origin. Apart from Karen’s elder brother Berndt, whom she cared deeply, Karen also had four older half-siblings from her father ( Quinn,2019) . However, no contacts existed between them and those half-siblings. At the tender age of 13, Horney kept diaries. These kept journals gave her confidence in her path for the future. Even though women were not allowed to attend university education in Germany during that period, she joined the University of Freiburg medical school in 1906 against her parents' wishes ("Karen Horney | German psychoanalyst," 2020) . She then transferred to the University of Gottingen before finally graduating with a master’s degree from the University of Berlin in 1913.
Horney then became a founding member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute in which she became a tutor. She directed training programs for the society, taught students, and did psychoanalytical research within the institution. In 1923, during the turmoil due to the First World War, Oskar Honey’s investments collapsed, and he became bankrupt as a result. After one year, he became more depressed following several extreme events in his life. Such events included bankruptcy, followed by severe encephalomeningitis, which led him to eight months of critical condition. In 1926, Karen separated from her authoritarian husband, Oskar, and divorced in 1937, leaving her with three daughters.
For Horney’s career, her years in Berlin were vital and productive. She entered into psychoanalysis with Karl Abraham. Abraham then appointed Horney to be an instructor in the Berlin Psychoanalytic Polyclinic in 1919 and exposed her to Freud’s attention. She then made a lot of friendships within a psychoanalytic cycle and beyond. Despite the several favorable circumstances in Berlin during that period, Hitler was elected in early 1930. As a result, the Nazi regime began (Weber, 2017) . Psychoanalysis was considered a Jewish science even though Horney was not a Jews. However, these dramatic turning of events in Horney’s life did not occur with some bit of chance. At one time, Alexander asked Helene Deutsch to join Freud’s Psychoanalytic group, which she was not interested in. Ultimately, Horney became the second choice for that particular position. That brought her to America for the rest of her life.
Despite being one of the psychoanalysts of the time, Horney viewed neurosis from a different perspective. She believed that neurosis is a continuous process with neuroses sporadically occurring in an individual’s life. That was opposing her contemporary opinion. They thought that neurosis was a mind’s negative malfunction in response to external stimuli. These stimuli include divorce, bereavement, or negative experiences during childhood. However, Horney believed that these stimuli are less critical except for childhood influences.
Furthermore, Horney also, together with Alfred Adler, formed the Neo-Freud discipline. As opposed to Freud, Horney believed that sex and aggression were not the primary constituents to determine personality ( Hu, 2017 ). She thought that there was a more significant influence of nature through childhood social occurrence than just the repressed sexual passion. Additionally, Horney also criticized Freud’s notion of penis envy. She admitted that penis envy occasionally occurs in neurotic women, but womb envy also occurs just as much in men.
Horney was one of the pioneers in the feminine psychiatry discipline. According to Horney, women were valued traditionally through their children and the wider family. She believed that both men and women have the desire to be ingenious and productive. Women can satisfy this need internally and usually. To do that, they conceive and become pregnant, then later give birth. Men, on the other hand, meet this need only through external ways. And finally, she also developed a mature theory in which she focused on the difference between interpersonal and intrapsychic defenses. This mature theory of neurosis made a massive contribution to psychological thought, especially in the study of personality.
III. Conclusion 100
Karen Horney made several essential contributions to self-psychology, humanism, feminine-psychology, and psychoanalysis. She generated much interest in women's psychology due to her refutation of Freud’s theory. Despite facing many obstacles she faced as a woman in a male-dominated field, she managed to be a prominent thinker who made crucial contributions to understanding human psychology.
References
Hu, Z., & Sun, H. A, (2017) Contrast analysis of Sigmund Freud and Karen Horney’s Theory of Psychology. Advances in Education Sciences Volume 13 , 174.
Karen Horney | German psychoanalyst . Encyclopedia Britannica. (2020). Retrieved October 31 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karen-Horney .
Quinn, S. (2019). A mind of her own: The life of Karen Horney . Plunkett Lake Press.
Weber, T. (2017). Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi . Oxford University Press, 2017.
