Quotes from Karen Horney

When one begins, as I did, to analyze men after a fairly long experience of analyzing women, one receives a most surprising impression of the intensity of this envy of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, as well as of breasts and of the act of suckling.

If you want to be proud of yourself, then do things in which you can take pride

To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown.

Concern should drive us into action, not into a depression.

A perfectly normal person is rare in our civilization.

It is naturally a sign of inner liberation when a patient can squarely recognize his difficulties and take them with a grain of humor. But some patients at the beginning of analysis make incessant jokes about themselves, or exaggerate their difficulties in so dramatic a way that they will appear funny, while they are at the same time absurdly sensitive to any criticism. In these instances humor is used to take the sting out of an otherwise unbearable shame.

There is no good reason why we should not develop and change until the last day we live.

Patients coming for consultation complain about headaches, sexual disturbances, inhibitions in work, or other symptoms; as a rule, they do not complain about having lost touch with the core of their psychic existence.

No one … can entirely step out of his time, that despite his keenness of vision his thinking is in many ways bound to be influenced by the mentality of his time

Even though godlike in his imagination, he still lacks the earthy self-confidence of a simple shepherd.

For the analyst it is a source of never-ending astonishment how comparatively well a person can function with the core of himself not participating.

The pride in intellect, or rather in the supremacy of the mind, is not restricted to those engaged in intellectual pursuits but is a regular occurrence in all neurosis.

The central inner conflict is one between the constructive forces of the real self and the obstructive forces of the pride system, between healthy growth and the drive to prove in actuality the perfection of the idealized self.

Whether we forget something we are not proud of, or embellish it, or blame somebody else, we want to save face by not owning up to shortcomings.

The fact that compulsive drives for success will arise only in a competitive culture does not make them any less neurotic.

A normal human being… does not exist.

The tenacity with which the neurotic adheres to any attitude is a sure indication that the attitude fulfills functions which seem indispensable in the framework of his neurosis.

Others are responsible for the trouble I am in—so I am entitled to repair. And what kind of repair would it be, if I made all the effort! Naturally, only a person who has lost constructive interest in his life can argue that way. It is no longer up to him to do something about his life; it is up to "them," or to fate.

There is no good reason why we should not develop and change until the last day we live.

We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.

Let me say to begin with: It is not neurotic to have conflict ... Conflicts within ourselves are an integral part of human life.

Because it corresponds to a vital need, love is overvalued in our culture. It becomes a phantom - like success - carrying with it the illusion that it is a solution for all problems.

Thou shalt free thyself from convention, from everyday morality.

To search for truth about self is as valuable as to search for truth in other areas of life.