Horney's Place in Psychoanalytic Thought Chair: Jane Simon M.D.

With recent attention paid to the study of narcissistic character structure and with the timely publication of the fortieth anniversary edition of Neurosis and Human Growth, Karen Horney's psychoanalytic theory is being examined anew in many professional and academic circles.

In a paper discussed in this workshop, Ingram and Lerner (1992) address the question of the proper place of Horney's theory in contemporary practice, especially the place of Horney in relation to object relations theory.

As further evidence of the reemergence of Horney's work in classical analytic circles, it can be noted that Douglas Ingram recently presented a lecture to the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute on Horney's contributions to the psychoanalytic understanding of personality disorders.

In assessing the political, organizational, and gender struggles that Horney faced, many participants noted Horney's unflinching clinical focus, her lack of interest in “political correctness,” and her courageous use of experience-near language and gender-free theory as bold challenges to the analytic establishment of her time. Some of these issues were discussed in the context of Danielian's (1988) paper on Karen Horney and Heinz Kohut, especially how Horney's character solutions and her subjective frame of reference anticipated most contemporary schools of thought such as relational models, two-person psychoanalysis, cognitive models, subjectivity and social constructionism, systemic therapy, and of course Kohut's self-psychological theory.

Jane Simon concluded the workshop by locating Horney's “realizing self” at the vortex of changes amidst the intersecting matrices of conscious/unconscious and self/other. The workshop participants agreed that the freshness and relevance of Horney's theory result from the centering experience of her concept of a realizing self—;a dynamic formulation so close to pure process as to appear timeless.

J.D.