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Reviewing Otto Rank's Modern Education in 1932, Karen Horney complained that the reaction against Freudian psychoanalysis is “as yet incapable of… orderly … thought” and called for a “critical review of the body of knowledge which is embraced by psychoanalysis.” In 1939, she undertook such a review herself in New Ways in Psychoanalysis. She identified what she regarded as Freud's “imperishable” contributions, attacked “the debatable premises” on which his system is built, and devoted the remaining 14 chapters to a consideration of separate aspects of Freudian theory and practice. Her usual procedure was to begin with an exposition of Freud, to evaluate his views, and to conclude with a statement of her own position. Although she expressed great respect for Freud, she was often very critical, and many reviewers complained of her polemical tone.
Horney felt that Freud's enduring contributions were the doctrines “that psychic processes are strictly determined” and that they are profoundly influenced by unconscious emotional forces. She valued his accounts of repression, reaction formation, projection, displacement, rationalization, and dreams. And she believed that Freud has given us indispensable tools for therapy in the concepts of transference, resistance, and free association.
Horney's crucial objections to psychoanalysis were that it is “an instinctivistic