ABSTRACT
Karen Horney’s subject was the “neurotic character structure.” To summarize the core of her argument: a person who experiences “basic anxiety” resulting from adverse emotional circumstances in early life may seek and find a rock of inner security by forming an idealized image of himself or herself. The cold war, raging fiercely at the time, received ample domestic as well as foreign coverage in the Soviet press. An unknown man had contacted the State Department and suggested that much of Russia’s enigmatic behavior in the cold war might become explicable if one took account of the possibility that Joseph Stalin was paranoid. If Stalin were to die, maybe the regime would call off the terroristic new purge apparently in the making, with preparations for the trial of the “doctor-murderers.”.
