As we have seen, Freud was essentially mystified by women and finally gave up trying to understand them. Perhaps for this reason, psychoanalysis has always seemed to understand men better than
women and to view men more positively than women. According to Horney, this should not be surprising: The reason for this is obvious. Psychoanalysis is the creation of a male genius, and almost all those who have developed his ideas have been men. It is only right and reasonable that they should evolve more easily a masculine psychology and understand more of the development of men than of women. (Horney and Kelman, 1967, p. 54)
Horney agreed with Freud on the importance of early childhood experiences and unconscious motivation but disagreed with his emphasis on bio- logical motivation, stressing cultural motivation in- stead. As far as the therapeutic process is concerned, Horney used free association and dream analysis and believed transference and resistance provided important information. She was much more optimistic about people’s ability to change their personalities than Freud was, and, unlike Freud, she believed people could solve many of their own problems. Horney’s book Self-Analysis (1942/1968) was one of the first self-help books in psychology, and it was controversial. One reason for the controversy was Freud’s contention that all analysts had to be psychoanalyzed before being qualified to treat patients.
In conclusion, we can say that Horney was strongly influenced by Freudian theory and accepted much of it. However, she ended up disagreeing with almost every conclusion that Freud had reached about women. At the time, disagreeing with Freud took considerable courage: It must be realized that departing from Freudian dogma at the time was no easy matter. In fact, those who did so were excommunicated just as if they had violated religious dogma. Horney was excommunicated because she dared to contradict the master.… Horney learned from observing her father as a child how devastating blind belief in religious dogma could be; perhaps that was one reason she decided not to let Freud go unchallenged. (Hergenhahn and Olson, 2007, p. 149)
Chodorow (1989) recognizes Horney as the first psychoanalytic feminist. Because Freud’s was the first comprehensive effort to explain personality and his was the first comprehensive attempt to understand and treat individuals with mental illness, all subsequent theories of personality and therapeutic techniques owe a debt to him. One of the greatest tributes to Freud is the number of prominent individuals he influenced, and we have discussed only a small sample. (For a more extensive sample, see Roazen, 1992.)