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Horney's newer writings are based on her “new” theory of neurosis, which actually represents a one-sided aspect of a part of Freud's theory.
I have criticized this theory at another place.1 The differences between Freud's and Horney's theories could be summarized as follows: Freud discovered that various instinctive drives are effective within the child. The growing child has to fulfill the task of bringing into accordance the demands of these drives, and the demands of his environment. The fulfillment of this task is difficult—probably especially so under the present cultural circumstances. A certain attempt to solve these difficulties consists of the child's “defending” himself against objectionable impulses in such a way these impulses are excluded from the realm of the rest of the personality. The total personality impoverishes accordingly; but the expelled impulses remain effective in the unconscious where they are not under the controlling force of the ego any longer, and influence the behavior of the personality in many ways. The manifestations of neuroses consist partly of attitudes which serve the purpose of assuring the defense; to another part they consist of effects of the failure of assurances and defenses—the warded off contents returning in a distorted form, invading the personality from a foreign district. Psychoanalytic treatment undoes the pathogenic defense and regains for the personality that what has been repressed.
Karen Horney, however, sees in all neurotic behavior only the assuring part, the unconscious “arrangement” (as Adler called it), that is, not something which happens to the personality against its will, but something which the personality develops in order to become able to deny or to control feelings of anxiety or loneliness; according to her, the neurotic personality develops many “trends” of this kind, and the interplay of these various trends characterizes the neuroses. She formulates that “in the center of psychic disturbances are