Discussions

“The detached person is a rather vague category. The word means only someone who is not a functioning, interacting part of the life he is supposed to be part of. He seems to stand aside, look on and observe, but with the basic attitude of an outsider. I do not wish to define the term more precisely because it is a term frequently used and one that encompasses a large group of varying individuals. I do not make a differentiation between self-alienation and detachment.”

Dr. Eckardt has defined what she is talking about and clearly limits the details of her definition. You may have wished for more, and may not like her definition, but if you are to listen to, respond to, and comment on it meaningfully it must be from her defined position. This applies to any presentation. I have heard hundreds of them. The limited value to the thousands of listeners often derived from the fact that wittingly and unwittingly they attempted to impose their presuppositions upon the presenter and what he was presenting.

This possibility is intensified by the fact that Dr. Eckardt is Dr. Horney's daughter. Some might feel she should rigidly adhere to her mother's viewpoint. This, in spite of the fact that Dr. Horney kept changing and evolving her ideas, as did every original contributor to psychoanalysis; that for her psychoanalysis was a constantly evolving and changing discipline to the evolution of which she had contributed so much; and, finally, that Dr. Eckardt's failure to develop her own ideas would be a denial and contradiction of her mother's basic philosophy that we continue to grow as long as we are alive. A second difficulty arises for people trained in, familiar with, and daily using the theoretical constructs evolved by Dr. Horney. The terms “resignation,” “detachment,” “alienation” are factually their everyday working tools. And much that Dr. Eckardt has presented could very comfortably and accurately fit under Horney's concept of the “supremacy of the mind,” “compartmentalizat