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Self-Analysis

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All of us suffer from ineffective beliefs that Karen Horney calls "neurotic trends". Almost alone in the psychiatric community she encourages the seeker of self truth that there is hope in doing it your self. Her clear enumeration of the complexes that plague us and their consequences assist one in first discovering the mind's conditioned reactions and then gradually eliminating the ineffective trend. She states frankly that life is the best therapist. If the reader can learn from reading, her books will guide the sincere seeker on the path. "Self Analysis" is the starting point for that path and she advises one of the limitations and the need for occasional outside help. This book helps recognize the neurotic trends that limit ones perception of reality and happiness. To discover the causes and interrelations within the personality the reader should proceed through her other books: "Our Inner Conflicts", The Neurotic Personality Of Our Time", and "Neurosis and Human Growth". "Self Analysis" remains the gateway and the reassurance when doubts creep into this demanding process. This book led me to the wisdom of this wonderful healing woman, one of the greatest gifts the 20th century has to offer us.

Don't be fooled or put off by this excellent volumes' small size!

Having disposed of the current mass resistance to psychoanalysis, one can be ready for the works of Karen Horney. She is, after all, what all our current 'popular' psych. writers have cut their teeth on, a good part of the time. Her dissociation from some dimensions of Freud notwithstanding, many will find all her books very useful. I have re-read them all several times, and currently am working with SELF-ANALYSIS. It is full of useful accounts ('case history' material) that are quite useful, and deserving of many re-readings.

It also has a generous supply of necessary aphorisms for analysis, blended with the text. One could make a list of them. I bet such a list would constitute a useful outline for study of her book.

Yes, the SELF-ANALYSIS volume can be opaque in many respects, at first. It does require re-readings, at least for the beginner. It is, however, an excellent hook to hang your analytical hat from. Once determined to get from psychology in general, and the works of Karen Horney specifically, all they are worth, this book will become a standby for overcoming mental obstacles to sanity and health. Nobody can walk away from a thorough and honest assimilation of Karen Horney's books without a richer, sunnier, more positive and optimistic outlook on human psychology and life. This is entirely apart from the basic foundation/springboard one can get from Karen Horney for further psychotherapeutic reading and study.

Although written years ago, Karen Horney's books lack the shrillness and lesser professionalism of many popular psychology writers. At the same time, she makes many basic truths and understandings of psychology practical, workable. This is an advantage over more advanced writers in psychoanalysis. You can get alot out of reading Karen Horney without wading through the greater complexities of, say, Otto Fenichel, Edward Kempf, Edward Bleuler, and other writers on psychoanalysis, who may intimidate new readers by an apparent initial lack of explication. (You can turn to such writers later. And I would highly recommend the three I have here mentioned. Horney's list she includes in the first few sectons seems a mite incomplete. )

Whatever her flaws, she communicates much of the stability and sobriety with regards to psychology, and life itself, that Clara M. Thompson does ('Interpersonal Psychoanalysis', Basic Books.) Our popular psych. writers to the contrary, it is pleasurable to learn psychology as something besides a circus, or perhaps a superficial ego-gratificaton festival.

(Worthy introductions of a classical type abound. Anna Freud's 'The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense' is one of the best, short, concise, sane introductions to any personal psychology studies whatsoever. Her fathers' 'Interp. of Dreams' may be gleaned to advantage, yet may take awhile to assimilate in its largesse: I would suggest, by and large, going for his ' Psychopathology of Everyday Life,' a briefer text, for your beginning readings of psychoanalysis. Eventually you will add the rest of Freud, and others.

Might I also suggest that you add to Karen Horney, Theodore Reik's 'Listening with the Third Ear,' Jung's 'Two Essays on Analytical Psychology,' and ' Man and His Symbols,' Fenichel's 'Psa. theory of the Neuroses,' Eduard Bleuler's ' Demenetia Praexox, the Group of Scizophrenias,' Helene Deutsch's two-vol 'Psychology of Women,' and Franz Alexander's 'Psychosomatic Medicine,' to your basic psychology studies ? - readings like these can 'walk you over' to the saner side of psychology. Even such as Georg Groddeck's 'Book of the It,' in spite of the eccentricity of both author and text, could prove quite useful and enlightening. Brenner's plodding intro, 'An Elementary Textbk. of Psychoanalysis,' revised since the 1950s, also may prove useful to many.

It is advised that, thru all this democratic selection of readings, chosen despite greater and lesser difficulties and vagaries, one should avoid becoming dogmatic, and focus instead on comparing and contrasting ideas, for a long time. This is essential for objectivity and proper application. It is a discreet, non-fanatical, commonsense, yet pleasurable and confident overall reinforcement of your observational skills, that you should want to acquire. ' All things in moderation!' and 'Fanaticism is above all to be eschewed.' If this sounds like learning about life, so it is: psych. is rather like that.


To swallow mamy of these texts whole, without forethought and discrimination, would be a mistake. without a thoughtful maintenance of distance from them before making them part and parcel of one's overall inegrated understanding, is essential if one is to study and understand them. )

Horney offers a useful recommended reading list in the first part of SELF-ANALYSIS for the beginner.
Yet all of Karen Horney's books themselves should be read by those interested in understanding self and others. They make the reader take that undogmatic 'one step back fom life,' so necessary for an understanding of psychology, that allows one to access necessary objectivity and calm towards life and self.

I always recommend Karen Horney as a 'sin qua non,' even for more advanced readers in the realm of psychology. Her general appeal, as well as her sober, non-flashy approach, is also useful for those who wish to apply preventatives against potential mental illness problems arising in their own lives, for now and the future.

I might, however, recommend getting Karen Horney's other books first, and reading those before concentrating on the SELF-ANALYSIS volume. In truth, all of Karen Horney's books deserve a place on anyone's health bookshelf. You won't be making a mistake by putting them there.

(as an aside: what we need is a one-volume edition of a half-dozen of her earlier volumes, for convenience, and to alert readers more immediately and thoroughly to the fact that she wrote more than one or two books.)

To put it simply, Karen Horney has yet to be replaced, either as a psychology writer, or as a general necessity.

Karen Horney believes in her clients ability to heal themselves, with and with out an analyst. Growth can be made between sessions, when the client is ready- not at the assigned hour of an assigned day. Go for it; believe in yourself. Horney believes in the process and in the individual. Great book - thanks.

This is the best introduction to Karen Horney's thinking about neurosis and how it can be healed. The book was written to propose the idea that people suffering from neurosis can do a lot of work on their own, with or without a therapist. Despite having been published in 1942 and written from just beyond the boundary of psychoanaylitic orthodoxy, her ideas are quite modern and relevant.

To find out if Horney's thinking resonates with you, begin by reading Chapter Two, The Driving Forces in Neuroses and the first part of Chapter Three covering the Stages of Understanding in Clare's analysis (pp. 35-82). (Clare is a rather remarkable woman whose work on herself inspired Horney to write this book. Her story is compelling and her issues are not the least bit out of date.) If you recognize yourself or others in these pages, proceed to Chapter Six, Occasional Self-Analysis (pp. 138-158) and Chapter Eight, Systematic Self-Analysis of a Morbid Dependency (pp. 173-224). These parts of this book will tell you whether you want to read more of Horney's books. I would recommend Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis as the logical next step.

The remainder of the book is primarily a defense of the notion that Self-Analysis is possible and desirable. Her intended readers here are her fellow professionals, whom she expects to be rather skeptical.

If Horney were writing today, I suspect that she would substitute Therapist for Analyst and Client for Patient in this book. In addition, she would not feel the need to point out the differences between herself and Freud, Jung, etc. Otherwise, her words are crisp and clear and could have been written today.

....which I bought as a bored college student and loved. Penetrating character analysis by an ex-student of Freud who developed her own theory of neurosis...and her own emphasis on the capacity for what she called "wholeheartedness." A bit technical in places but invaluable.

Karen Horney was a bold pioneer in personality psychology, and her books are still relevant today. She challenged the authority, or the authoritarianism, of the traditional Freudian psychoanalyst (even though she was trained as one). This book is a great source for learning about oneself, and the biography "A Mind Of Her Own" is informative for learning more about Karen Horney. I recommend both.

Karen Horney (1885-1952) was a German psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, who is sometimes classified as "Neo-Freudian," although she questioned many of Freud's theories (particularly about psychosexual development).

She states in the Introduction to this 1942 book, "It has always been regarded as not only valuable but also feasible to 'know oneself,' but it is possible that the endeavor can be greatly assisted by the discoveries of psychoanalysis... It is the object of this book to raise this question seriously, with all due consideration for the difficulties involved. I have attempted also to present certain basic considerations regarding procedure, but since in this field there is little actual experience to serve as guide my purpose has been primarily to raise the issue and to encourage endeavors towards a constructive self-examination rather than to offer clear-cut answers."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"On theoretical grounds, then, I see no stringent reason why self-analysis should not be feasible. Granted that many people are too deeply entagled in their own problems to be able to analyze themselves ... all of this is no proof that in principle the job cannot be done."
"Briefly, the adult merely adjusts his behavior while the child changes her personality."
"Self-analysis is an attempt to be patient and analyst at the same time..."
"The analyst's general task is to help the patient to recognize himself and to reorient his life as far as the patient himself deems it necessary."
"The method in self-analysis is not different from that in work with an analyst, the technique being free associations."

Item arrived early and in great shape. Great add to my collection of books. Karen Hornet made many contributions to psychology that are used today.