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This is the centennial year of Karen Horney's birth. How have her contributions fared? How have those of us immersed in psychoanalysis learned from Horney's teachings, and how do we view the assimilation of her teachings by our profession? How have we adapted beyond the frontier she opened to us? One approach to these, questions is to consider her contributions, first, to the language we use in speaking about psychoanalysis, second, to the philosophy we follow in thinking about our work, and third, to the theory of personality and treatment we use in organizing our clinical approach. Finally, we may give some thought to how well we have realized the opportunities Horney presented.
In this number of the Journal, an article by Edward Clemmens underscores how we use language for communicating conceptions and for providing the tools necessary to conceptualization. Clemmens's dismay at the translations of Freud, a dismay he shares with Bettelheim, leads us to consider how Horney attempted to reach her readership. She did precisely what Freud had done: she wrote in a style so accessible to her readers that they could identify themselves, find themselves, or at least find the language with which to think about themselves. She disdained the seeming precision of positivism, the remove of Cartesianism (Rendon, 1985), which often undermines the immediacy of experience and an intimacy with what's said.
This in mind, it comes as no surprise that a touchstone of Horney thinking and expression is the capacity to reach directly to the listener or reader. The effectiveness of this point of view, most notably in the hands of Theodore Isaac Rubin, has been to further the reach of not only Horney's psychoanalytic perspective, but of psychoanalysis and mental health treatment, generally.
Still, what does her language and style communicate? What we desire most is an underlying philosophy that holds forth verities with ongoing and progressively enriching possibility both for those giving and