This post was published to My College Class Notes at 2:54:07 AM 5/28/2008

Horney’s Social Psychoanalytic Theory

Account My College Class Notes
Category Psychology Notes

Horney, with her social psychoanalytic theory, rejected Freud’s emphasis on

sexuality and his views on women and introduced the concept of basic
anxiety.
Karen Horney
German-American psychiatrist Karen Horney helped establish the American
Institute for Psychoanalysis before becoming a professor at New York Medical
College in 1942. She developed the neo-Freudian approach to psychoanalysis,
and believed that neuroses are caused not only by instinctual drives, but also
by experiences in society.
Karen Horney (1885-1952), German American psychiatrist, born in Hamburg,
and educated at the universities of Freiburg and Berlin. She was an instructor
at the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Berlin from 1920 to 1932, when she
immigrated to the United States. After serving as associate director of the
Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis for two years, she taught at the New York
Psychoanalytic Institute from 1934 to 1941. She became dean of the
American Institute for Psychoanalysis, which she helped to found, in 1941
and a professor at New York Medical College in 1942.
Horney founded a neo-Freudian school of psychoanalysis based on the
conclusion that neuroses are the result of emotional conflicts arising from
childhood experiences and later disturbances in interpersonal relationships.
Horney believed that such disturbances are conditioned to a large extent by
the society in which an individual lives rather than solely by the instinctual
drives postulated by Freud. Among her writings are The Neurotic Personality
of Our Time (1936), New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939), Self-Analysis (1942),
Our Inner Conflicts (1945), and Neurosis and Human Growth (1950).

Horney

Prof. T.R. Tharney: PSY101 Chapter 9: pp. 1

Crazy Joe’s Psych 101 Notes II
 The term used for Horney’s approach to
psychodynamic theory.
Horney broke with the Freudian tradition of
Social emphasizing sexuality. Her view was, like Jung and
Psychoanalytic Adler, was essentially optimistic.
Theory Horney believed humans to be capable of growth and
self-realization. This trend can be blocked, however, if
as a child an individual acquires a sense of basic
anxiety.

A feeling of being isolated and helpless in a

Basic Anxiety potentially hostile world.

Prof. T.R. Tharney: PSY101 Chapter 9: pp. 2

Crazy Joe’s Psych 101 Notes II
 Prof. T.R. Tharney: PSY101 Chapter 9: pp. 3
Crazy Joe’s Psych 101 Notes II