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That master of the psychoanalytic aspects of biography, Leon Edel, has described this volume about Karen Horney as a “landmark book.” Indeed it is, in many respects, a superb work. Most biographies omit the very data, probably because they are often unobtainable, that the psychoanalyst needs in order to understand his or her subject. Not so this book. The amount of intimate and very personal material, not only about Horney but other psychoanalysts as well, is truly impressive. Quinn is a very good detective.
One of the interesting features of Horney's life was that she was one of the first women in Germany to study medicine, entering the University of Freiburg in 1906 for this purpose. “German universities were the last in Europe to admit women to medical studies” (p. 99). “Prussia, the most reactionary of the German states in its policies toward women, didn't admit them to universities as degree candidates until 1908” (p. 135). Thus Horney was in much the same position as Elizabeth Blackwell in the United States and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson in England, the first women in their respective countries to get the M.D. degree, to found hospitals, and to open medical schools for women. But this interesting feature of Karen Horney's life receives only scant attention in this book, despite her consuming interest in social and cultural matters.
This is hardly the place to enter into the development of Horney's independent psychoanalytic views; they are well known and discussed in detail in the book. Some points, however, may be mentioned. Her name has become attached to the concept of basic anxiety, and, since she employed this term, one must assume that she did not know or disregarded the fact that it was widely employed in the 19th century. Her split from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute was vividly noticed in the world of psychiatry at that time. People who were in no way involved received communications from both sides of the debate, and the event obviously stirred