The Neurotic Personality of Our Time

OK, so I'm one of those people who's had his life changed by Karen Horney's "Our Inner Conflicts" and "Neurosis and Human Growth". I had read both of those books several times and taken something new out of them each time. Since then I had moved on to other authors in my quest to understand myself (namely Carl Jung and Alice Miller). I figured that since I found NAHG much better overall than OIC, Horney had progressively gotten better and her earlier stuff wouldn't be worth reading.Well, I was wrong. I had some time and decided what the hey, I'd read this book. This was her first shot at writing a book. And it's amazing. Her genius is quite apparent even in this early book. There were quite a few moments where I just had to grin and say to myself "I've missed you." This is Karen Horney, authentic as ever. There were a lot of connections that I made concerning some of the finer details of my neurosis, that I never made until reading this book.She spends much of the book making a connection between anxiety and hostility, a connection that she did not make so explicit in her later books but which is very eye-opening. The chapter on guilt feelings was possibly my favorite; they are elaborated in a way I'd never seen before. Her brief discussion of perfectionism, amounting to a couple paragraphs, made me think that maybe that was the original core of my neurosis, as I was able to trace stuff she talked about to far earlier periods in my life than I ever had reading her other booksNo, it's not her best book. And if somebody insisted they were only going to read one Horney book, absolutely I would recommend Neurosis and Human Growth. And if it were two, I'd add Our Inner Conflicts.But if you're a Karen Horney fan who has not yet read this book, move your cursor to the right of your screen right now, and click "Buy now with 1 click". You won't regret it.

This books was recommended to me by a good friend of mine. Really easy to read, incredible complex and deep concepts explained easily and in a simple way. Will definitely review my highlights and reread some chapters in the future.Recomended to everyone: we'll all find lots of knowledge in it and resemblance to our personal lives and of those people that surround us.

A great read. It is recommended reading for all of my graduate students.

I like the book. I find the info discussed in this 40+ yo book relevant in today's world. The ideas are presented in a clear easy to read format.

i would recommend that everyone who is going into the field of psychology read this book! it is simply amazing!

Excellent. From 1937 and still relevant today.

I think these are the better books on psychology. Well wriiten, easy to read, and organized. They touch upon everything. But the thing is, What can they do? They may be able to make us aware of a problem. But really it is just detailed explainations about the problems, but nothing to do about them. By focing too much on all these crazy problems may make us worse. This is basically the human condition.

This book is nice a aspect of psychological approach. I highly recommend for psychology students to read it. It is not comparable to Freud or Carl Jung but she has her way of analyzing psychological advances and problems.

Read this book for my Psychoanalysis course at university. I highly recommend it.

good

Great work by Karen Horney. A few minor typos in the Kindle edition but nothing serious.

加藤諦三先生の書籍にて度々引用されている著者の書籍である。専門家の方だけでなく一般の方向けにも書かれているので、専門書よりも分かり易い。フロイトと著者の違いは"All is not gold that glitters."とのアナロジーにより"All is not sexuality that looks like it."と要約されている。この書籍にいじめについての大切な教訓が書かれている。それはこんな事が読後に分かる事だ。他人を嘲笑いながら優越感に浸り一時的に自尊心を維持出来たとしても、それを数十年続ける訳にはいかない。人間的な成長もなく人格も幼いまま劣等感を誤魔化すだけのために自分より弱い人間を作り依存しながら生きるという醜悪さを自分自身で正確に認識した途端その人は自殺に走るであろう。問題は無意識に他者依存を繰り返すことであり、本当の原因を知らないまま数十年経った後で「実は自分の行動全てが中学時代の同級生への復讐であった」、「自分の生き方を認めない親への復讐であった」などと言うことである。人をいじめたい本当の原因は何か自分を誤魔化さないで考えることが重要だ。社会に出て数年経ち大学名以外、仕事において他者に対する優位性を認識出来なくなると(本来しなくても何の問題もないはずだが)、「努力すること」でなく「失敗をしないようにすること」と「他者を嘲り笑うこと」で「自分が惨めにならない様に合理化」するようになる。そうなったら立派な神経症。自分の成功より他人の失敗の方が大切となる。人間としてはそこで終わり。こんな事が分かる。

Hard to find book, very interesting