ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1952, the German-born psychoanalyst Karen Horney travelled from her home in New York City to Japan to tour the major Zen monasteries in the company of her host D. T. Suzuki, the renowned interpreter of Zen Buddhism to the West. As a girl, she was caught in the cross fire of her parents' conflicted marriage. In the face of religious teaching that contradicted her own observations and experiences, she turned for guidance to others, including her brother, a friend, and a teacher. Eventually, it was in psychoanalysis that she searched—not for faith in the traditional sense but for knowledge that could substitute for "faith, firm as a rock, that makes oneself and others happy". Horney's rejection of Freud's concept of the tripartite psyche, with its attendant acceptance of the inevitability of inner conflict, derived from her more therapeutically oriented approach to psychoanalysis.
