Karen Horney Clinic

The following addresses were delivered at the ceremony marking the official opening of the Karen Horney Clinic on May 6, 1955, at the Hotel Plaza, New York. Mrs. Norman Kelman is President of the Karen Horney Foundation. The Honorable Jacob K. Javits is Attorney General of the State of New York. Dr. Paul V. Lemkau is Director of the New York City Community Mental Health Service. Dr. Paul Lussheimer is Clinical Director of the Karen Horney Clinic. Dr. Nathan Freeman is President of the Board of Trustees of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis. Dr. Harold Kelman is Dean of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Honored and distinguished guests, ladies and gentleman, friends: It is my great pleasure to welcome all of you in the name of the Board of the Karen Horney Foundation, and to have you share with us this important occasion: the opening of the Karen Horney Clinic. For many of us this is a dream come true after years of struggle and, often, despair. It feels like the fullness and gladness a mother experiences at the birth of her child after a painful and strenuous labor. And we want to share with you this fullness and this gladness because it is largely due to your support, your generosity and your friendship that this birth was made possible.

It was three years ago in this month of May that the Karen Horney Foundation was chartered by the State of New York as a corporation to take part in a program of Community Mental Hygiene for Social Betterment. We were then a handful of people, inspired by the hope of setting up a low-cost psychiatric clinic, associated with and staffed by the American Institute for Psychoanalysis and serving the community. The idea arose from the recognition that Dr. Horney and her colleagues were eager to have a clinic connected with their Institute, but lacked the time, the energy and the administrative experience to set up the structure necessary for this enterprise.

When I presented to Dr. Horney my thought that lay people, experts