Neurosis and Human Growth
by, M.D. Norton, $3.75.
Karen Horney’s four previous books have earned her a sizable following among laymen interested in a responsible presentation of psychoanalytic ideas. Her latest work interprets the neurotic process as a special form of human development — a distortion of the “autonomous striving toward self-realization.” The crux of Dr. Horney’s argument is that the neurotic — alienated from his real self — squanders the energies driving toward self-realization in a hopeless and barrowing attempt to actualize an idealized self. A large part of her book is devoted to discussing the symptoms of tins neurotic “search for glory,” many of which, of course, look like a search for something very different. one rather troublesome point is Dr. Horney’s failure to buttress her “basic tenet that there exists an inherent urge “to develop given potentialities.”