Books / Psychodynamic & attachment
The Neurotic Personality of Our Time
By Karen Horney. Her 1937 cultural and interpersonal revision of psychoanalysis, tracing neurotic anxiety to early relational insecurity and competitive cultural contradictions.
Book details
Author of listed edition: Karen Horney
Edition: First edition (1937), W. W. Norton & Company (New York) checked via Internet Archive
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Edition year: 1937
Language and origin: English (United States)
Form and genre: Clinical & Theoretical Monograph
Level: Introductory
Historical era: 1920–1939 · Ego Psychology & Early Child Analysis
Covers: Cultural definition of neurosis, basic anxiety, the neurotic need for affection and power, neurotic guilt and cultural contradictions in modern society
APA 7th reference: Horney, K. (1937). The neurotic personality of our time. W. W. Norton & Company.
What it is & historical context
The Neurotic Personality of Our Time is a 1937 book by German-born psychoanalyst Karen Horney, written in English after her emigration from Berlin to the United States and published by W. W. Norton & Company.
The book launched the neo-Freudian cultural and interpersonal school in the United States alongside Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm, and remains a landmark in feminist and socially contextualised psychotherapy.
Core clinical themes & arguments
Horney argues that what counts as neurotic varies across cultures and historical periods, and that modern neuroses are driven not by universal biological instincts or infantile Oedipal phases, but by "basic anxiety": an insidious feeling of being lonely and helpless in a potentially hostile world, rooted in lack of genuine warmth and respect in childhood and amplified by cultural contradictions (such as the tension between ruthless individual competition and ideals of brotherly love). She maps how people attempt to ward off basic anxiety through compulsive pursuits of affection, submissiveness, power, prestige or withdrawal. This entry was checked against the 1937 Internet Archive scan.
Questions for critical reading
How does Horney’s concept of a self-reinforcing "vicious circle" in present interpersonal relationships anticipate cognitive-interpersonal cycle formulations? How do cultural norms of competition and success shape what brings clients to therapy today?
Who it may suit
General readers, counselling and psychotherapy trainees, and clinicians interested in how social and cultural pressures intersect with relational anxiety.
Scope & clinical limits
Horney’s portrait of "our time" specifically reflects 1930s Western middle-class urban culture in Europe and the United States. It is a theoretical and clinical essay, not an empirical epidemiological study.
Paired academic and clinical scholarship
Paired work: Karen Horney: A Psychoanalyst’s Search for Self-Understanding (Bernard J. Paris, 1994)
Reference: Paris, B. J. (1994). Karen Horney: A psychoanalyst’s search for self-understanding. Yale University Press.
Traces how Horney’s 1937 cultural-interpersonal critique of Freudian drive theory inaugurated feminist psychoanalysis and interpersonal theory.
Source-mapped claims and evidence notes
Claim 1: Published in 1937 in New York by W. W. Norton & Company, written in accessible English for both clinicians and educated lay readers. (Internet Archive scan neuroticpersonal00horn and Britannica biography) [Source 1: Horney, K. (1937). The neurotic personality of our time. W. W. Norton & Company. Internet Archive digital scan.]
Claim 2: Replaces Freudian biological instinctual determinism with "basic anxiety" (the feeling of being isolated and helpless in a potentially hostile world) and examines vicious circles of seeking affection and power. (1937 W. W. Norton edition Chapters I, III-V and XV (Internet Archive scan)) [Source 1: Horney, K. (1937). The neurotic personality of our time. W. W. Norton & Company. Internet Archive digital scan.]
Sources and inspection notes
Supports: Pending verification: 1937 W. W. Norton publication, fifteen-chapter structure, basic anxiety formulation and cultural contradictions analysis.
Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2024). Karen Horney: German-born American psychoanalyst.
Supports: Pending verification: Historical context of Horney’s critique of orthodox Freudian biological determinism and her 1937 book.