Eminently useful, although somewhat contradictory, this admiring
intellectual biography of an iconoclastic psychoanalyst
recapitulates the strengths and weaknesses of its subject's
thought. Karen Homey (1885-1952) played a key role in the
development of psychoanalysis between the wars and transcended her
discipline as a feminist thinker. Homey scholar Paris
(English/Univ. of Florida) surveys the psychoanalyst's ideas while
locating their sources in her personal experiences. He builds on
the work of previous biographers Jack Rubins (Karen Homey, 1978)
and Susan Quinn (A Mind of Her Oven, not reviewed), who brought
messy details of Horney's life to light without, he contends, fully
relating them to her mature theory. For Paris, Horney's ideas
represent her effort to come to grips with her own problems - to
perform, as her best-known title has it, a "self-analysis." After a
lucid account of Horney's youth in Germany, Paris treats her early,
relatively orthodox essays and her subsequent development of a
theory of feminine psychology. He shows how pondering social
concerns led Horney to consider the cultural dimensions of neurosis
and eventually to develop a new paradigm of psychological structure
as a complete, ongoing system, rather than an individual story only
understandable through recourse to its occluded origins. Her adult
life was thorny: Paris discusses her "female Don Juanism," her
battles in the bitter psychoanalytic arena, and her difficult
affairs with famed rivals like Erich Fromm. Extensive commentaries
on Horney's late thought tie these strands together, focusing on
ideas about pride and defense strategies expressed in Our Inner
Conflicts and Neurosis and Human Growth. Throughout, Paris
maintains allegiance to Horney's conviction that we each have a
true inner self, even while he depicts stark discontinuities among
the facets of her own personality. It will take a grander synthesis
than his, one that incorporates wider historical and cultural
context, to really resolve this tension between Horney's thought
and life. In the interim, however, this serves as a fine
introduction to a stimulating thinker whose influence continues to
rise as therapy becomes more pragmatic and less dogmatic. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Karen Horney (1885-1952) is regarded by many as one of the most
important psychoanalytic thinkers of the twentieth century. Her
early work, in which she quarreled with Freud's views on female
psychology, established her as the first great psychoanalytic
feminist. In her later years, she developed a sophisticated theory
of her own which provided powerful explanations of human behavior
that have proved to be widely applicable. Yet through these years
of intellectual achievement, Horney struggled with emotional
problems. This engrossing study of Horney's life and work draws on
newly discovered materials to explore the relation between her
personal history and the evolution of her ideas. Bernard J. Paris
argues that Horney's inner struggles - in particular her compulsive
need for men - induced her to embark on a search for
self-understanding, which she recorded first in her diaries and
then in her covertly autobiographical psychoanalytic writings.
Although this search brought Horney only partial relief from her
problems, it led her to profound and original insights into the
human psyche. Paris describes Horney's life - her childhood and
adolescence in Germany, marriage to Oskar Horney, motherhood,
analysis and self analysis, immigration to the United States,
founding of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, ostracism by
the psychoanalytic establishment, and many romantic liaisons. At
the same time he examines the various stages of Horney's thought,
showing how her experiences influenced her ideas. Focusing
particularly on Horney's later work, Paris shows her mature theory
to be an important contribution to the study of literature,
biography, gender, and culture, as well as topsychoanalysis and
psychology.
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