Quotes from Karen Horney

Until I feel strong enough to pray sincerely and to act accordingly, I would rather not pray at all.

Why is it so unutterably beneficial, the thought that someone besides myself knows me?

Like all sciences and all valuations, the psychology of women has hitherto been considered only from the point of view of men.

Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself remains a very effective therapist.

Fortunately [psychoanalysis] is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

Fortunately, psychoanalysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself remains a very effective therapist.

As so often in neurotic phenomena—or is it always?—we find that the patient's reasoning, conscious or unconscious, is flawless, but rests on false premises.

when he [the neurotic] becomes aware of his despair he usually cannot account for it. He will be likely to ascribe it to various external factors, ranging from his job or his marriage to the political situation. But it is not due to any concrete or temporary circumstance. He feels hopeless about ever making anything of his life, ever being happy or free. He feels forever excluded from all that could make his life meaningful.

Philosophers of all times have stressed the pivotal significance of being ourselves and the despair attendant on feeling barred from its approximation... "What other significance can our existence have than to be ourselves fully and completely?

The patient must acquire the capacity to assume responsibility for himself, in the sense of feeling himself the active, responsible force in his life, capable of making decisions and of taking the consequences. With this goes an acceptance of responsibility toward others, a readiness to recognize obligations in whose value he believes, whether they relate to his children, parents, friends, employees, colleagues, community, or country.

Because it is so vital, the capacity for love and friendship should be especially mentioned in this context; love that is neither parasitic dependence nor sadistic domination but... 'a relationship ... which has no purpose beyond itself; in which we associate because it is natural for human beings to share their experience; to understand one another, to find joy and satisfaction in living together; in expressing and revealing themselves to one another.

T]o make a decision presupposes the willingness and capacity to assume responsibility for it. This would include the risk of making a wrong decision and the willingness to bear the consequences without blaming others for them. It would involve feeling, "This is my choice, my doing," and presupposes more inner strength and independence than most people apparently have nowadays.

We can say this much, however: a normal [inner] conflict can be entirely conscious; a neurotic conflict in all its essential elements is always unconscious. Even though a normal person may be unaware of his conflict, he can recognize it with comparatively little help, while the essential tendencies producing a neurotic conflict are deeply repressed and can be unearthed only against great resistance.

The mere fact that he has gone that far indicates that his will to come to grips with himself is strong enough to prevent him from being crushed.

Experience…shows beyond any doubt that patients can develop an amazing faculty of keen self-observation if they are bent on understanding their own problems.

If, however, we look upon introversion (or, as I prefer to call it, neurotic detachment) as a means of evading conflicts that arise in close contact with others, the task is not to encourage more extraversion but to analyze the underlying conflicts. The goal of wholeheartedness can be approximated only after these have been resolved.

It is not accidental that a conflict that starts with our relation to others in time affects the whole personality. Human relationships are so crucial that they are bound to mold the qualities we develop, the goals we set for ourselves, the values we believe in. All these in turn react upon our relations with others and so are inextricably interwoven.

It is impossible to present the basic conflict by simply showing it in operation in a number of individuals. Because of its disruptive power the neurotic builds a defensive structure around it which serves not only to blot it from view but so deeply imbeds it that it cannot be isolated in pure form. The result is that what appears on the surface is more the various attempts at solution than the conflict itself.

Under favorable conditions, man's energies are put into the realization of his potential...Under inner stress, however, a person may become alienated from his real self. He will then shift the major part of his energies to the task of molding himself, by a rigid system of inner dictates, into a being of absolute perfection.

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

The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be emotionally sincere, to be able to put the whole of oneself into one's feelings, one's work, one's beliefs.

[Neurotics are] torn by inner conflicts ... Every neurotic ... is at war with himself.

The view that women are infantile and emotional creatures, and as such, incapable of responsibility and independence is the work of the masculine tendency to lower women's self-respect.