Karen Horney, M.D.

The Neurotic Personality of Our Time

In this book, Karen Horney explores the basic structure of neuroses in the context of their cultural assumptions. Her topics range from the neurotic need for affection to guilt feelings and the quest for power, prestige, and possesion. Horney maintains that the conflicts found in neurotic persons in a given culture correspond to the ways of life characteristic of that culture. She writes, for example, "It is only under definite cultural conditions that we find domineering or self-sacrificing mothers, and it is also only because of these existing conditions that such an experience will have an influence on later life."