New Perspectives in Psychoanalysis: Contributions to Karen Horney's Holistic Approach. Edited By Harold Kelman. New York:  W. W. Norton, 1965. 249 pp.

Heinz Hartmann once wrote that “the cardinal requirement of the scientific method is the unswerving insistence upon precision in methodology and upon logical consistency of theory.” Harold Kelman, in his introduction to this volume, reminds us of Karen Horney's association with Hartmann in Berlin, as well as with others, such as Abraham, Boss and Fromm, who were able to develop Freud's system in individual ways without the formal disruptions of relationship which characterized the departure of Adler, Jung and Rank from the Vienna group. Thus the experience of these creative minds can be regarded as deriving naturally from the original Freudian position, and it is necessary to consider their contributions in the light of both the original tradition and the modifications they made in it. Hartmann, as one of the most significant of those who amplified and extended Freud's ego psychology, remained much more within the original framework of thought than the others. For him the id is one thing and the ego another, and even though the problem of adaptation to the various demands of life obscures any hard and fast distinction between the two, the analyst's treatment of a patient's experience depends on an evaluation of what the description indicates about internal libidinal processes. Kelman says of Freud's “closed-system thinking” that “society and the analyst had to be fixed coordinates, and the patient the single variable.” (p. 11)

It is fair to say that Freudian schools of psychoanalysis have tended to remain within this framework where the therapeutic relationship is concerned, and have made modifications in theoretical perspective to account for new developments in the theory of personality. But other theoretical developments, among them those of Horney and her followers, have dealt in a more thoroughgoing way with the total life-situations of people who present themselves for therapy, and this modification of basic theory has resulted in changes in therapeutic techniq