Response to Jack Danielian

I am grateful to Jack Danielian for his bold and elegantly reasoned paper, “The Meta-Realization in Horney and the Teaching of Psychoanalysis”, in which he outlines a plan to rethink the curriculum of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis (AIP) to restore it as recognizable as the institute founded by Karen Horney in 1941. Although my approach to psychoanalytic practice draws on technique and theory from multiple sources I credit my training in Horney theory as the foundation of who I am as a clinician. I want to see the AIP continue to offer that grounding to new generations of analysts and so I want to support Danielian's energetic defense of the identity of the AIP as a Horneyan institution. However, I think Danielian's approach, that we stick to teaching only what he sees as evolving out of Horney theory, may not further our common goal of strengthening the AIP and continuing the Horney tradition of valuing good clinical practice over orthodoxy.

Let me follow Danielian's lead by first saying a little about myself and my experience with Horney theory and the AIP. I was first exposed to Horney theory as a young woman in treatment with Dr. Theodore Isaac Rubin, then the president of the AIP. My artistic creativity was unlocked and I have reaped the benefits of that in the 40 years that have passed since then. The person I am today was strongly influenced by Horney theory. It was in the air I breathed. In my late thirties, still in treatment with Dr. Rubin, I went to medical school. I completed my psychiatric residency in 1991. My psychoanalytic training at the AIP began while I was a resident and continued during the first decade of my practice as a psychiatrist. After completing my psychiatric residency, I worked in psychiatric hospitals for