A Report on the Karen Horney Clinic

In a unique, longstanding collaboration with the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and the American Institute for Psychoanalysis the Karen Horney Clinic enters its thirty-seventh year.

The Clinic was founded in 1955 by a highly motivated and interested group of lay people in order to preserve the legacy of Karen Horney's life work. The mission of the Clinic was to provide training opportunities for Institute candidates and low-cost psychoanalytic services to the community.

The last thirty-six years have seen a preservation of that mission as the Clinic has expanded to provide more and more sorely needed services to the community. The core of the Clinic's activity is still the provision of psychoanalytic patients to Institute candidates. These candidates receive intensive supervision from senior faculty members of the Institute. Although they come from all walks of life, for the most part these patients are drawn from the working-poor socioeconomic class. Psychoanalysis would not be available to them in the private sector for financial reasons. Candidates not only treat these patients at low fees but also donate some of their time at no cost.

Over the years the Clinic has witnessed an influx of patients not suitable for psychoanalysis for a variety of reasons including but not limited to type of psychopathology and cultural trends. These patients are treated with one of the other psychotherapeutic modalities offered at the Clinic including psychoanalytic psychotherapy, supportive psychotherapy, or counseling, all based on Karen Horney's psychoanalytic ideas.

Special interests of Institute graduates have always been welcome at the Clinic. As a result, programs other than psychoanalysis or psychotherapy of the adult patient have blossomed over the years. At different times there has been a day treatment program for people with schizophrenia, one of the first psychoanalytically oriented programs for patients who are homosexuals, an obesity program, a group p