Mission Statement

The Karen Horney Clinic’s current mission is the same as when it was founded in 1955: to offer accessible psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic services.The Clinic continues to reflect Dr. Karen Horney’s optimistic and humanistic philosophy that individuals have the capacity to grow and change throughout life, a departure from the thinking of many of her peers in the psychoanalytic community of the early 1900’s. Dr. Horney stressed the importance of society, culture, and an individual’s intimate interpersonal relations as the most important influences on personality development. She felt that personal psychological difficulties originally arise from anxiety-generating adverse early relationships, which in turn interfere with growth.

She was convinced that therapy geared at understanding and outgrowing difficulties would result in restoring a person to a path of personal self-realization. This basic philosophy is the guiding principle of all Clinic services. It is the foundation from which patients gain an understanding of themselves, develop the capacity to grow and change, and enrich their lives. The staff of the Clinic conducts treatment with the underlying conviction that each person has the inherent capacity to improve one’s life and become increasingly warm, spontaneous, joyful, and unafraid.