You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It continues to be the case that the historiography of psychoanalysis contains certain underdogs who are in need of special attention. As far as I know, there is virtually no literature whatever about such different figures as Paul Schilder and Paul Federn, yet both are important. On the other hand, there is a growing number of books connected with those so-called deviants who at one time or another broke with the ranks of the orthodox “mainstream.” Often, nobody can quite remember who the representatives of the “mainstream” might once have been, since they left so little in the way of memorable writings of their own. But everyone would agree that psychoanalysis has had its share of difficult people who were capable of becoming organizationally troublesome.
Karen Horney is in a special category all her own. For, although she once was humiliated by the New York Psychoanalytic Society and departed to form her own training facilities, by now some of her writings are increasingly apt to be cited among the necessary texts to be mentioned in connection with the early history of essays on female psychology. Thus, although listing citations to, say, Jung, Adler, Rank, Fromm, or Lacan would be almost sure to raise eyebrows among those in a position today to review most scientific papers, Horney now seems no longer an unacceptable forebear. On the contrary, analysts are likely to find in Horney's work ammunition to show that early psychoanalysis was not as dim-witted about the psychology of women as feminist critics have been trying to make it seem.
Bernard Paris, who is President of the new International Karen Horney Society, has had the great merit to ignore all stereotypes about Horney's work. His book is a genuine contribution to intellectual history; he has sought to understand Horney's work in the