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One of Freud's great contributions to our understanding of the human mind was his discovery of the essential linkage of deprivation and rununciation to human growth. Only when a person is deprived of the possibility of realizing his narcissistic omnipotent fantasy positions can mature assessment of the rhythms of life be made during the development of a sense of relation of self and others. These rhythms include triumph and tragedy, gain and renunciation, possibility and limitation.
Karen Horney described how the process of denial of this eternal tension between possibilities and limitations was at the core of the neurotic process, a core she described as “the search for glory.” She also realized, very early in the development of her theory, that the search for glory included processes that involve individuals, cultures and sub-cultures—even psychoanalytic institutes, as she was to experience in a directly personal manner.
Yet, out of that depriving experience, came a burst of clinical and theoretical creativity, and with ramifications which have only begun to be realized. An example may be found in the fact that Horney's theories allowed many people, now described by classifical analysts as borderline or narcissistic personality disorders, to receive help some twenty years before such conditions were generally thought to be analyzable.
However, no person or group is immune to the ever present neurotic forces of our time. These forces affected the Neo-Freudian groups that formed during the 1940's, for those institutes eventually tended to become insulated, restrictice, and even dogmatic in their own “search for glory.” However understandable these moves might be, the result was and is something of a tragedy. A primary symptom of that tragedy has been a marked decrease in creativity within psychoanalytic groups. As I outlined in a previous paper, “The Religion of Psychoanalysis,” (AJP Vol. 40, No. 1, 1980) the absolutization of any theory must lead to a form of stagnati