Karen Horney (1885-1953) was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has become popularly known as a prominent opponent of Freud's approach to feminine psychology. But this work formed only a part of Horney's career and her most important contribution to psychoanalysis is her mature theory, in which she also departed from Freud, that stresses relationships and other social factors as the primary forces operating in the development and functioning of personality. Horney's theory developed steadily throughout her long career and her departures from psychoanalytic orthodoxy often isolated her at first, and then led to productive work that attracted followers.
Horney was born Karen Danielsen in Hamburg, Germany. In the early part of the century there was, among educated Europeans, a growing "atmosphere of social and political excitement concerning women's rights" and Horney, assisted by her mother, took advantage of the fact that universities and professions had begun to admit women to persuade her father to overcome his initial reluctance to finance her education (Symonds 302). She was educated at Freiburg and G÷ttingen universities and took her medical degree at the University of Berlin in 1913. She had married Oskar Horney in 1909 and first entered analysis, with Karl Abraham, in 1910. Following the completion of her medical course Horney went on to study psychiatry. She became one of the founding members of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute in 1920 and was an instructor there until 1932 when she decided to emigrate to the United States. Horney had separated from her husband in 1926 and she went alone to Chicago where, at the invitation of Franz Alexander, she was to take the position of Associate Director at the new Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Horney's main work up to this point had centered on her attempt to "modify orthodox ideas about female psychology" (Paris 135). At this time Horney still worked within the fr...