Closing Remarks

As we close this symposium on the work of Karen Horney, we shall recapitulate the most significant aspects of her contributions to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. We have viewed Karen Horney throughout our working sessions as a “frontier” figure, if I may borrow a term aptly chosen by Dr. Clemmens. The frontier is at the same time a point of contact, an interface, between psychoanalysis and psychiatry, in the sense that her approach to the patient is more phenomenological than metapsychological; the frontier is the forefront within psychoanalysis itself in the sense that, without separating herself from the methodology of Freud's basic concepts, she opened herself up to a new perspective and a new understanding of psychopathology. Lastly she lived near the frontier in her own life experience, which led her from a culture that was full of rigid demands toward a new form and a meaning of life in which dissent was more easily accepted.

This “frontier” aspect of Horney's was not something that just happened to her in her life and to her concepts, but rather it was an active experience created by herself, the result of a personal attitude and the consequence of her ability to tolerate loneliness. This enabled her to question all postulates, while remaining true to her convictions. She had the inner freedom that allowed her to feel, to think, and to desire, in spite of pressures that might cross her path. She did not feel compelled to deprive herself of this capacity in order to gain safety by tying herself to a group or an existing world view.

It is to Dr. De la Nuez's credit to have shown how Horney rejected all manner of simplistic thinking, since she understood that idealization, rationalization, and a fascination with what passes for normal, all attitudes that belong in this group, only succeed in destroying the true essence of an experience and reduce it to an abstraction that may be reassuring, but that cannot be real or true. Out of her respect for comple