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More than half of Horney's book has to be read before one discovers what self-analysis consists of. Until that point is reached, the reader is led to conjecture. Here are some of the clues: '… there is considerable danger that [the analyst] will misconstrue, mislead, perhaps even inflict positive injury—not through bad will but through carelessness, ignorance, or conceit' (p. 25). '… the gap between a trained and an untrained person is often regarded as wider than it is' (p. 24). '… [of the neurotic] the fact remains that it is his world, that all the knowledge about it is there somehow, that he need only observe and make use of his observations in order to gain access to it' (p. 26). '… [self analysis] might shorten the procedure considerably if in the intervals between analytical sessions, and also during the sessions, [patients] were inspired with the courage to do active and independent work on themselves' (p. 36). Whatever she is talking about so far, it is clear that Horney is unfriendly to psychoanalysis.
There is the usual stricture on the '… one-sided emphasis that Freud has given sexual factors' (p. 295). Then comes the expected rescue of the ego, from 'Freud's … postulate that the "ego" is a weak agency tossed about among the claims of instinctual drives, of the outside world and of a forbidding conscience' (p. 23).
Having rescued the ego from Freud, Dr. Horney then lays claim to it. Here is the argument: '[Freud] was primarily interested in the removal of neurotic symptoms; he cared about a change of personality only in so far as it would guarantee a permanent cure of symptoms… Freud's goal is thus essentially to be defined in a negative manner: gaining "freedom from"… Other authors, however, including myself, would formulate the goal of analysis in a positive way: by rendering a person free from inner bondages make him free for the development of his best potentialities.' It is only in verbiage that this statement differs from Freud's formu