ABSTRACT
Karen Danielsen Horney was born in a small village (Blankenese) near Hamburg, Germany, on September 16, 1885. Her father was a tall, dashing sea captain whose male chauvinistic views frequently clashed with those of her proud, intelligent, and beautiful mother. Her family also included an older brother, several stepsisters and stepbrothers from her father’s two other marriages, and a warm and loving stepgrandmother. (See Kelman, 1967; Rubins, 1978.)
Karen was an excellent student throughout her academic career, and received her medical doctorate degree from the University of Berlin in 1915. She underwent psychoanalytic train ing, joined the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute in 1918. and began her own private practice one year later. However, she ultimately split with Freudian circles over the issue of female sexual ity. Karen married Oskar Horney, a businessman, on October 31, 1909. The union produced three daughters; but a near-fatal bout with meningitis and the runaway postwar inflation in Germany left the formerly successful Oskar bankrupt and withdrawn. The Horneys separated during the 1920s, and were formally divorced in 1939.
