Karen Horney was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1885 and studied at the University of Berlin, receiving her medical degree in 1913. From 1914 to 1918 she studied psychiatry at Berlin-Lankwitz, Germany, and from 1918 to 1932 taught at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. She participated in many international congresses, among them the historic discussion of lay analysis, chaired by Sigmund Freud. Dr. Horney came to the United States in 1932 and for two years was Associate Director of the Psychoanalytic Institute, Chicago. In 1934 she came to New York and was a member of the teaching staff of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute until 1941, when she became one of the founders of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and the American Institute for Psychoanalysis. In Neurosis and Human Growth, Dr. Horney discusses the neurotic process as a special form of the human development, the antithesis of healthy growth. She unfolds the different stages of this situation, describing neurotic claims, the tyranny or inner dictates and the neurotic's solutions for relieving the tensions of conflict in such emotional attitudes as domination, self-effacement, dependency, or resignation. Throughout, she outlines with penetrating insight the forces that work for and against the person's realization of his or her potentialities. This 40th Anniversary Edition includes a new preface by Stephanie Steinfeld, Ph.D., and Jeffrey Rubin, M.D., of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis.

One of the most original psychoanalysts after Freud, Karen Horney pioneered such now-familiar concepts as alienation, self-realization, and the idealized image, and she brought to psychoanalysis a new understanding of the importance of culture and environment. Karen Horney was born in Hamburg in 1885 and was educated in Berlin. She went to the United States in 1932 and in 1941 became one of the founders of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and the American Institute for Psychoanalysis. In "Our Inner Conflicts", now reissued in a new format, Horney develops a dynamic theory of neurosis centred on the basic conflict among the attitudes of moving towards, moving against, and moving away from people.

如果说《我们时代的神经症人格》（1937）的问世标志着霍妮精神分析体系的诞生，那么《自我分析》（1942）、《我们内心的冲突》（1945）的相继出版，则是对其思想的进一步充实和完善。 “自我分析”是霍妮在总结自己，及其同行和患者经历的基础上，为治疗轻度神经症设计出来的方法。它把专业精神分析疗法中分析师和患者两个角色的适用部分合二为一，交由患者单独承担，独自操作，因此，“它是患者与分析师一身担”的尝试。 当今世界是竞争激烈的世界，人们在适应环境、相互交往、面对自己时，不可避免地会遇到种种压力，如果处理不当，这些压力很容易会造成精神障碍。在这方面，尤其在专业精神分析至少暂时还难以为每一个有求于它的人所用的情况下，“自我分析”不失为最佳选择之一。