Editorial

I recently had occasion to review the early contributions of the psychoanalytic revisionists of the 1930's. The Neurotic Personality of Our Time by Karen Horney was, of course, among the leading deviations from orthodoxy. I had read it when it was published in 1937 during my training at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute before Horney's teaching privileges were taken from her. In re-reading this extraordinary book, I noted a theme that was of particular interest to me since I have been writing about it for more than thirty years-fear of success and its relation to work dysfunction. In more recent years, the fear of success has been extensively written about in professional and popular journals. As far as I am aware, no one has quoted Horney-myself included.

In 1916, Freud had written a trilogy entitled, “Some Character Types Met with in Psychoanalysis.” The second part of the trilogy was entitled, “Those Wrecked by Success.” Two patients were described who finally had attained longstanding goals. One patient became irreversibly schizophrenic; the other fell into a deep depression. Although this was one of Freud's classic clinical papers, he never again referred to the important subject he had introduced. Horney was the second psychoanalyst to give the topic major attention. “Thus far, we have discussed the fear of possible failure. But this is only one manifestation of the anxiety involved in neurotic competitiveness. The anxiety may also take the form of a fear of success. In many neurotics, anxiety concerning the hostility of others is so enormous that they are afraid of success even if they feel certain of attaining it. This fear of success results from fear of the begrudging envy of others and thus of loss of their affection. Sometimes it is a conscious fear. … in this fear, however, as in so many others, the neurotic person is more often aware, not of his fear, but only of the resulting inhibition…. Thus, inhibition may set in at each step of the way. The neu