Scientific Meetings

Each year the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis presents two series of scientific meetings. Regular meetings, held at the New York Academy of Medicine, are open to the public. During 1945-1946, the following topics were presented:

The Role of the Imagination in Neurosis. (Dr. Karen Horney) Imagination is a function of the mind which can serve constructive or destructive ends. The normal individual uses it for constructive planning or consolation in adversity; the artist consciously remolds reality through his imagination. The neurotic individual develops a need to live in the imagination when the inner psychic pressure becomes intolerable. Here he transforms his ideas about himself and the world in accordance with his unconscious needs, and thus achieves a sense of equilibrium. Although he may possess real potentialities for what he idealizes in himself, the main purpose of this self-idealization is its function as a solution for conflicts.

Living in the imagination is carried out in two different ways. Some neurotic individuals are excessively optimistic, and find satisfaction in the belief that magic fulfillment is always just around the corner. Regarding themselves as omnipotent, they feel exempt from death. Some, on the other hand, are resigned to the burden of themselves and living. They ask little from reality and confine their satisfactions to the imagination. Considering themselves worthless, they often think of suicide.

As a consequence of these attitudes, the neurotic individual experiences marked feelings of unreality. He is also easily hurt by contact with reality and readily humiliated when not accepted at his imaginary self-evaluation. At times he reacts with explosive anger. For the most part he is alienated from self and others and unable to assess realistically his personality assets and weaknesses. The concept of time has little meaning for the neurotic individual. His values are reversed, and therefore reality appears as unreality and