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This book is a companion volume to Advances in Psychoanalysis * and, like the preceding volume, consists of papers written by Karen Homey and her colleagues in the American Institute for Psychoanalysis and previously published in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. Where the focus in the previous volume was on basic theoretic formulations, this volume is devoted mainly to the application of theory to the understanding and treatment of specific clinical problems. While Horney's theory of human motivation and neurotic character development provides the basic orientation for these papers, the various authors have developed their ideas and applied them clinically in individual ways deriving from their own personal and professional experience. This is an expression of the open-endedness and holistic character of Horney's thinking, lending itself to growth and exploration in many directions. The basic premise of the approach to psychoanalytic treatment throughout the book is that defenses and solutions evolving during the neurotic character development alienate the individual from his real self and obstruct his movement towards self-realization. From this premise it follows that the essential aim of therapy is the working through of neurotic defenses and solutions, the resolution of inner conflict, and the liberation and strengthening of innate constructive forces. The spirit of this therapeutic approach is optimistic, not in the sense of prediction but in the sense of the possibilities deriving from a recognition of these constructive forces.
The introduction is written by Harold Kelman, Dean of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis and Editor of this journal. Kelman worked closely with Horney during the years in which the major evolution of her thinking took place. He presents this evolution as a movement from the closed-system thinking of 19th-century science to the open-system thinking and new humanism of 20th-century science, an evolution in which all sciences