Karen Horney

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Famous psychologists such as Freud, Piaget, Erikson, Adler, and Maslow have a similar common factor. They are all contributed the development of psychology, and they are all male. Did women play a role in psychology in the early 1900s? Women such as Ainsworth, Klein, Calkins, and Anna Freud were all significant figures who impacted psychology. Among these females, another woman in particular stands out, Karen Horney. She is best known for her critique of Sigmund Freud, being one of the founders of Neo-Freudianism, a departure from Freudian orthodoxy. This was a tremendous milestone because females did not have an option during this time and she was bold with her thoughts and beliefs. Overall, she has been a positive influence in psychology despite her setbacks, personal issues and criticism; she impacted the field with her viewpoints, and made a …show more content…

Women were not given the same respect as men in field; moreover, women were often not allowed to be in medical practices at all. Horney was also unhappily married and divorced moved to a new country, and faced criticism of her own by rejecting Freud’s theories on psychoanalysis (Smith, 2010). Although she faced a number of failures in her life, Horney kept a positive spirit and did not allow these events to keep her down. Even without any support, Horney continued to persue her medical degree, and successfully became an analyst in Germany. When she moved to America, she was forced to resign her position at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, because she voiced her own option about Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. The Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and the founding of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis was created by all of the difficulties and setbacks that Horney encountered all the way. Eventually, her ‘friends and colleagues opened the Karen Horney Clinic as a tribute to her work and dedication” (Jones,

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