Karen Danielsen Horney was a German-born American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Educated at the universities of Freiburg, Gottingen, and Berlin, she practiced in Europe until 1932, when she moved to the United States. Initially, she taught at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, but with others broke away in 1941 to found the American Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Horney took issue with several orthodox Freudian teachings, including the Oedipus complex, the death instinct, and the inferiority of women. She thought that classical psychoanalytic theory overemphasized the biological sources of neuroses. Her own theory of personality stressed the sociological determinants of behavior and viewed the individual as capable of fundamental growth and change.
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