Karen Horney Quotes

#1. Thou shalt free thyself from convention, from everyday morality.

Karen Horney

#2. There is no such thing as a normal psychology that holds for all people.

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

#5. Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

Karen Horney

#6. 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.

Karen Horney

#7. 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.

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

#9. If I couldn't be pretty, I decided I would be smart.

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

#11. 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.

Karen Horney

#12. That many-faceted thing called love succeeds in building bridges from the loneliness on this shore to the loneliness on the other one. These bridges can be of great beauty, but they are rarely built for eternity, and frequently they cannot tolerate too heavy a burden without collapsing.

Karen Horney

#13. A perfectly normal person is rare in our civilization.

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

#15. Many such relations are carried on under the camouflage of love, that is, under a subjective conviction of attachment, when actually the love is only the person's clinging to others to satisfy his own needs.

Karen Horney

#16. A normal human being ... does not exist.

Karen Horney

#17. Through the eclipse of large areas of the self, by repression and inhibition as well as by idealization and externalization, the individual loses sight of himself; he feels, if he does not actually become, like a shadow without weight and substance.

Karen Horney

#18. 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

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

#20. 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.

Karen Horney

#21. 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?

Karen Horney

#22. Miracles occur in psychoanalysis as seldom as anywhere else.

Karen Horney

#23. There's still such chaos in me. Still so little firmly outlined. Just like my face: a formless mass that only takes on shape through the expression of the moment. The searching for our selves is the most agonizing

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

#25. The conception of what is normal varies not only with the culture but also within the same culture, in the course of time.

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

#27. Life as a therapist is ruthless; circumstances that are helpful to one neurotic may crush another.

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

#30. It would not be going too far to assert that ... conflict confronts every woman who ventures upon a career of her own and who is ... unwilling to pay for her daring with the renunciation of her femininity.

Karen Horney

#31. The psychology of women hitherto actually represents a deposit of the desires and disappointments of men.

Karen Horney

#32. The searching for our selves is the most agonizing, isn't it? - and yet the most stimulating - and one simply cannot escape it.

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney

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

Karen Horney