I had to laugh while reading Karen Horney’s biography entitled, ” A Mind of Her Own” by Susan Quinn. The title is a bit misleading. It should have been called something like: “A Mind of Her Own— But Not Really”. As it turns out Dr. Horney thought very much like other world famous founders of the psychoanalytic movement; they shared a common blind spot. As with Freud and Jung, she believed that the rules about treatment boundaries didn’t apply to her. For me that was the most significant part of the story; but apparently the author didn’t agree. She devoted only two sentences in the entire book, to this aspect of Dr. Horney’s arrogance.
After reading through several hundred pages, in the recounting of her early life, her successes and frustrations with the profession of psychoanalysis, her disagreement with Freud about the psychology of women, and even her many affairs with colleagues and friends, I grew bored. Though I was fascinated by the description of the beginnings of the Institute for Social Research at Columbia and the description of the formation of the New School. This was partly due to that fact that I knew some of the founders of these organizations; back in the day, they were my mentors in graduate school. So I skipped to the last few pages, about the end of her life. I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for but I found it anyway. Describing Horney’s declining health and almost as an aside, Quinn lets the reader in on a little secret. Until her death, Karen Horney was having an affair with one of her patients/trainees. For a clinician to practice outside the bounds of the wisdom and knowledge of the profession, poses an ethical dilemma. To believe that she was immune from the dangers of blurred boundaries by virtue of her brilliance, was an act of hubris. What was Dr. Horney thinking? I would have liked to read Susan Quinn’s answer to that question.
