Karen Horney Clinic

The Karen Horney Clinic was opened officially on May 6, 1955, and the medical staff started functioning on May 11, 1955. This report deals with the period of clinic operation from the opening to June 30, 1956.

Preparations for the clinic had started years before its opening, and two organizations cooperated to make the clinic become a reality: doctors affiliated with the American Institute for Psychoanalysis worked on the medical policies, while a group of social-minded and experienced people attended intensively to the administrative matters. The purpose of the clinic is to provide low-cost psychoanalytic service to people who cannot afford private therapy; at the same time the clinic becomes a valuable adjunct to the training and research purposes of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis.

In the first year of its existence the clinic has already proved it value in every respect and we look forward to its continuing to do so. This value has been recognized very early by the great majority of the doctors of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis and they have demonstrated their belief in the clinic as a community service and as a medium for training by serving on the medical staff without remuneration and by volunteering for lectures.

The number of doctors working in the clinic during the first year was fifty-seven and the doctors contributed about 6,500 therapy hours. However, total patient service, including individual and group therapy, supervision, screening and administration, amounts to 9,000 donated doctor hours annually. The total number of patients screened during this period was 216, of whom 126 were assigned to therapy. While in the beginning individual therapy was the only method used, a group therapy program was introduced in January, 1956. As group therapists, only doctors were chosen whose many years of experience in this particular field was established; all of them are members of the Group Therapy Section of the American Institute for Psychoanal