Karen Horney (/ˈhɔːrnaɪ/;[3][4] née Danielsen; 16 September 1885 – 4 December 1952) was a German psychoanalyst who practiced in the United States during her later career.

[5] Those in The Cultural School of thought include Horney, Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Clara Thompson.

He was a ship's captain in the merchant marine, and a Protestant traditionalist (his children nicknamed him "the Bible-thrower", as he did indeed throw Bibles).

[13] According to Horney's adolescent diaries her father was "a cruel disciplinary figure," who also held his son Berndt in higher regard than Karen.

Horney is often thought of primarily as a neo-Freudian member of "the cultural school," which also includes Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan, Clara Thompson, and Abram Kardiner.

[14] She helped design and eventually directed the Society's training program, taught students, and conducted psychoanalytic research.

After studying more psychoanalytic theory, Horney regretted not objecting to her husband ruling over their children when they were younger.

Freud's increasing coolness toward her and her concern over the rise of Nazism in Germany motivated her to accept an invitation by Franz Alexander to become his assistant at the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis, and in 1932, she and her daughters moved to the United States.

Brooklyn was home to a large Jewish community, including a growing number of refugees from Nazi Germany, and psychoanalysis thrived there.

[15] It was in Brooklyn Horney developed and advanced her composite theories regarding neurosis and personality, based on experiences gained from working in psychotherapy.

Horney's deviation from Freudian psychology led to her resigning from her post, and she soon took up teaching in the New York Medical College.

The parent may also casually neglect to fulfill promises, which in turn could have a detrimental effect on the child's mental state.

The ten needs, as set out by Horney, (classified according to her so-called coping strategies) are as follows:[17] Moving Toward People (Compliance) Moving Against People (Aggression) Moving Away from People (Withdrawal) Upon investigating the ten needs further, Horney found she was able to condense them into three broad categories: Horney delves into a detailed explanation of the above needs (and their corresponding neurotic solutions) in her book Neurosis and Human Growth.

[18] Mosak (1989) states that while there is no direct evidence Alfred Adler and Horney influenced one another, they landed at similar theoretical understandings.

Like others whose views differed from that of Freud, Horney felt sex and aggression were not the primary factors that shape personality.

Horney, along with Adler, believed there were greater influences on personality, including social relationship factors during childhood, rather than just repressed sexual passions.

[citation needed] Horney was bewildered by psychiatrists' tendency to place so much emphasis on the male sexual organ.

Horney also reworked the Freudian Oedipal complex of the sexual elements, claiming the clinging to one parent and jealousy of the other was simply the result of anxiety, caused by a disturbance in the parent-child relationship.

Horney explained that the "monogamous demand represents the fulfillment of narcissistic and sadistic impulses far more than it indicates the wishes of genuine love”.

Her essay "Maternal Conflicts" attempted to shed new light on the problems women experience when raising adolescents.

Horney developed her ideas to the extent that she released one of the first "self-help" books in 1946, entitled Are You Considering Psychoanalysis?.

Paris writes: Horney's apparent loss of interest in feminine psychology has led some to contend she was never really a feminist, despite the fact she was far ahead of her time in her trenchant critique of the patriarchal ideology of her culture and the phallocentricity of psychoanalysis.

Janet Sayers argues that although Horney's "rejection of Freud's work in the name of women's self-esteem has certainly inspired many feminists," she herself "was far too much of an individualist ever to engage in collective political struggle—feminist or otherwise.

Horney's mature theory of neurosis, according to Paris, "makes a major contribution to psychological thought—particularly the study of personality—that deserves to be more widely known and applied than it is.

"[25] Near the end of her career, Karen Horney summarized her ideas in Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, her major work published in 1950.

(Horney had previously focused on the psychiatric concept of narcissism in a book published in 1939, New Ways in Psychoanalysis.)

[27] Horney believed that if we have an accurate conception of our own self, then we are free to realize our potential and achieve what we wish, within reasonable boundaries.

Thus, she believed self-actualization is the healthy person's aim through life—as opposed to the neurotic's clinging to a set of key needs.

[28][29] She concluded these ingrained traits of the psyche forever prevent an individual's potential from being actualized unless the cycle of neurosis is somehow broken, through treatment or, in less severe cases, life lesson.

The institution seeks to research and train medical professionals, particularly in the psychiatric fields, as well as serving as a low-cost treatment center.