Karen Horney Psychoanalysis Quotes

[The neurotic] feels caught in a cellar with many doors, and whichever door he opens leads only into a new darkness. And all the time he knows that others are walking outside in the sunshine. I do not believe that one can understand any severe neurosis without recognizing the paralyzing hopelessness which it contains. … It may be difficult then to see that behind all the odd vanities, demands, hostilities, there is a human being who suffers, who feels forever excluded from all that makes life desirable, who knows that even if he gets what he wants he cannot enjoy it. When one recognizes the existence of all this hopelessness it should not be difficult to understand what appears to be an excessive aggressiveness or even meanness, unexplainable by the particular situation. A person so shut out from every possibility of happiness would have to be a veritable angel if he did not feel hatred toward a world he cannot belong to. – Karen Horney Psychoanalysis Quotes

A perfectly normal person is rare in our civilization.

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

I come from a great home and fully supportive family that helped to nurture my dreams. A lot of people don’t have those same things in their household.

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.

A perfectly normal person is rare in our civilization.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning. – Karen Horney Psychoanalysis Quotes

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

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.

Is not the tremendous strength in men of the impulse to creative work in every field precisely due to their feeling of playing a relatively small part in the creation of living beings, which constantly impels them to an overcompensation in achievement?

Life itself still remains a very effective therapist…

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

The perfect normal person is rare in our civilization. – Karen Horney Psychoanalysis Quotes

We are too ready to accept others and ourselves as we are and to assume that we are incapable of change. We forget the idea of growth, or we do not take it seriously. There is no good reason why we should not develop and change until the last day we live. Psychoanalysis is one of the most powerful means of helping us to realize this aim. – Karen Horney Psychoanalysis Quotes