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More than any other psychoanalyst, Karen Horney bridged the gap between the earliest, tentative formulations of Freud and the modern neo-Freudian analytic schools. In writing Karen Horney: Gentle Rebel of Psychoanalysis, Dr. Jack Rubins devoted several years of his life to an exposition of her work. That it was also a labor of love to experience vicariously Horney's life and times shines through the pages.
This book could not have been constructed in anything resembling its present form by anyone other than a psychoanalyst deeply conversant with and seriously dedicated to her theories. Painstakingly researched, it is scholarly and beautifully written. It promises to remain the definitive work on Horney's life, rebounding to the credit and edification of the neo-Freudian movement, The American Institute for Psychoanalysis, and, above all, to Dr. Rubins. If a true understanding of a science is incomplete without a fundamental grasp of its history, then this book is obligatory reading to anyone interested in present-day trends in psychoanalysis.
Retracing the steps of Horney's life from her childhood roots in Blankenese on the Elbe River in Germany and her early education in Hamburg, the author takes us through her medical education in Freiburg and Berlin, her emigration to Chicago, and finally her settling in New York City. Her early relationship with her domineering, Bible-quoting, Victorian patriarch of a father, who was more comfortable commanding a ship in the tradition of his Norwegian forbears than raising a daughter, is vividly described. Her German-Dutch mother, eighteen years younger than the father, the third wife of this imposing figure, was “beautiful, more sophisticated, more intellectual and better educated than he.” She provided emotional warmth and encouragement of a girl's intellectual development and supported the young Karen's earliest rebelling. Horney's intellectual brilliance was revealed early and was consistently manifested throughout her academi