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Bernard J. Paris' Karen Horney: A Psychoanalyst's Search for Self-Understanding is a very satisfying book. I urge you to read it for a careful presentation of the interrelationship of Horney's life's experiences with her professional experience, how these contribute to the evolution of her theories, and for insight into her impact on more modern theories. Paris avoids the artificial separation of ideas from life, of theory from the experiences from which they arose. The clarity of the writing and its multi-layered approach is evidenced from the very beginning: the table of contents. This extremely well-organized book has five major sections:
The Making of a Psychoanalyst—her early years up to medical school, marriage, and motherhood (she had children while still in medical school);
The Freudian Phase and Feminine Psychology—elaborating on some early papers, including “The Given Task for a Woman Psychologist” and “Relationships between the Sexes”;
The Break with Freud and the Development of a New Paradigm—Horney's critique of aspects of Freud and her development of a cultural approach, of a structural approach to neurosis in her works, of her own self-analysis;
Horney As an Adult—her relationships with men, with her daughters, and schisms and leadership; and
Horney's Mature Theory—including reference to self-realization and the idealized self, pride systems and the place of her theories in Third Force psychology.
In an appendix, Paris reflects on Horney's interdisciplinary applications, and influence on recent psychologies, and then presents a newly discovered exceptional article, Woman's Fear of Action. Paris also has excellent notes and references, as well as a number of Horney's personal photographs.
Karen Horney (1885-1952) kept diaries from age 13, and even in adolescence was observant of character and interrelationships. In her fifth diary, begun in