The Child Within. Karen Horney On Vacation1

Abstract

Patterson shares a side of her mother, Karen Horney, that few people knew. Her mother always helped her children to be true to themselves, to the child within.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 66, No. 2, June 2006 ( 2006)

DOI: 10.1007/s11231-006-9009-3THE CHILD WITHIN. KAREN HORNEY ON VACATION1Renate Horney PattersonI am thrilled and extremely grateful that I am able to attend this wonderful celebration. I am the youngest of the Horney daughters. My father

always said that the desire for a son was the father of many daughters. I

was my parents last desire.In about 1924 my mother, excited about the newest idea that early

childhood analysis would prevent neurosis in the adult, sent her three

daughters to the Freudian couch of Melanie Klein. I will read from my

Lazarus, Whats Next? A Memoir to take you to that time in our lives

with Mother.As I lay on the hard, ominous couch, Melanie asked me to talk about my

thoughts and dreams. Being a lively, healthy eight-year-old, I told of climbing

trees and playing Indians. The therapists long reply startled my innocent ears.

All my thoughts, she said, had to do with penis envy and anus play. Although

proud of having been told to make the long trip by bus and subway to her office alone, I soon found a way to get there ever so slowly. Arriving late, I

would dive not onto but underneath the terrible couch, with my fingers

pressed firmly in my ears. Messy nightmares haunted my nights. Thus, on a

rainy afternoon with nothing else to do, I suggested to Nati that we should

write letters to people and drop them in their mailboxes. What fun I had

writing all that I had learned on the couch and signing the letters, "Greetings

from your Fart."It did not take long for my letters to arrive back home, along with indignant

complaints. How my parents must have laughed, but with Fathers strictest face,

he pronounced, "Nacki, you must go to every house where you dropped a letter

and say, Excuse me, I am Fart. I accidentally dropped something here! " With

tears of shame, I paced back and forth in front of the first door. I had promised,

so I had to ring the bell. A maid opened it, I rambled my sentence and fled. At

home, I pleaded, Please, was not one house enough? My parents burst out

laughing. Hugging me, Mother proclaimed, So much for child analysis!

(Horney, 1999, p. 18).1This address was delivered on October 23, 2005, at the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, New York, celebrating the 120th anniversary of Karen Horneys birth.Address correspondence to Renate Horney Patterson, 3041 Via Serena South Unit B, Laguna

Woods, CA 92637, USA; e-mail: [email protected].

1090002-9548/06/0600-0109/1 2006 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis110 HORNEY PATTERSONBut what I really wanted to talk about was a side of Mother few people

knew. Id like to call it the child within. As a child she had devoured the

multiple volumes of the German author Karl Mays Wild West novels

depicting the American Indians with her idolized hero "Winnetou, "

whom she portrayed in her games with her girlfriend. After she had passed on, we found at the bottom of her closet a package wrapped in old

brown paper containing her childhood treasures. There were her adolescent diaries, two rag dolls, one white, one black, and a pennant with the

name Winnetou stitched on.Yes, there was definitely a Winnetou in her. I laughed out loud when

I read the memoirs of Mrs. Lederers, her secretary, in which she describes

an evening walk down Broadway, shortly after she had arrived in America, and saw a striking woman with white hair and a brown face. That,

she said to her husband, must be an American Indian. No, her husband laughed, that is the famous Dr. Karen Horney.Mother was very happy when, after fleeing Germany in 1939, my husband, my little daughter, and I settled in Mexico. She loved the idea of

her daughter living in Mexico, where she could spend her vacations. And

Mother came down from New York to stay with us regularly. Once,

while we were staying in Cuernavaca with friends, a real American

Indian chieftain had been invited to lunch. He looked as if he just walked

out of her story books. Mother was thrilled. I remember her listening and

looking at him spellbound as if she were a child seeing Santa Claus, or

her idolized Winnetou. Gone were her searching thoughts; there was just

the child within. And this was her greatest charm: she lived and enjoyed

the moment, whether it was the markets, the villages, or their fiestas with

their merry-go-rounds, which she had to ride every time.The vacations in Mexico she most enjoyed were those spent in the picturesque village of Ajijic on Lake Chapala, with the surrounding steep

mountains, a stony beach crowded with fishermen drying and mending

their nets, women washing their clothes, and children playing. Ajijic had

one simple hotel but we preferred the primitive bungalows of an eccentric charming German, Don Pablo. Don Pablo believed in nature. There

was no electricity, no running water; the grounds were unkempt weeds

on which Pablos twelve dogsall street-variety muttshis chicken, and

his three donkeys roamed freely. The kitchen was a dugout with mud

floor. Nestled on its tiled roof were bottles and bottles of his homemade

cognac, aging in the sun. There were scorpions and black widow spiders,

but in spite of it all it was paradise. What made it paradise was Pablos

warm personality, his delicious, simple fresh food, the view from the

porch, and the wonderful people one met. Even then, in the middle

1940s, Ajijic was an artist colony, and Mother took painting lessons withKAREN HORNEY ON VACATION111one of the local painters. Evenings were often spent on the porch telling

stories or singing German, American, and Mexican folksongs accompanied by Pablo strumming his guitar and enjoying his cognac from the

kitchen roof. Once Mother asked, "Please, Pablo, let us sing the Mexican

anthem." "Which anthem?" we all asked, "We never sang it." "Oh yes,"

she insisted, "my favorite, La Cucaracha, la cucaracha ya no sabe caminar, etc. "Mother," I burst out laughing, "Mexicans would be very offended that a song telling of a cockroach which cant walk straight

because it ran out of marijuana to smoke is their national anthem."There is a famous picture of Mother, which I have seen in several

books, where she is laughing and holding a glass in her hand. The picture

has many titles, the correct and not very dignified one would be: The

Celebration and Naming of Pablos Newest Donkey, Alibaba.During those war years in the forties, airlines had a priority system and

Mother, for one reason or another, was always the first one to be dumped

off. One summer there was a hurricane. Again, I will read from my memoirs."Well," Mother said, "if its not priorities, its a hurricane." Then, wondering

what to do with the extra time, she suddenly smiled. "How about driving to

San Jose Purua? I read in a gourmet magazine that they have an absolutely fantastic buffet on Saturday nights prepared by an Austrian chef. Today is Fridaylets go."Off we drove through the mountains and down to Purua. There it does not just

rain, it pours with a spectacular tropical intensity. But even so, we had a few

dry moments in which to enjoy walks through the lush, fragrant gardens. How

she loved the banana and orange plantations, the abundance of bougainvilleas,

hibiscus, and other flowers. And, of course, we could not miss having a healing

bath and smearing sulphur mud on our faces for rejuvenation. The buffet, a

gourmets heaven, lived up to its fame.Our little old car sputtered and choked on the return trip. We prayed to our

guardian angels to help push it up the steep mountains. And so, in creeping agony, we finally made it back home.A call to the airlines assured her of a flight the next day at noon. "Wonderful,"

Mother said. "Then I can still do some last-minute shopping on the way to the

airport." So we shopped, but when she wanted to pay, she discovered that she

did not have her purse."Do you have my pocketbook?" she asked turning to me."No. Maybe you left it in the car." We checked, but in vain."I must have forgotten it at home. Do we have time to fetch it? I need my ticket

and passport."112 HORNEY PATTERSON"Impossible," Fredy answered, "You two take a taxi to the airport while I rush

home and try to make it there in time for your departure."In the process of being widened, the only street to San Angel had become a

narrow obstacle course. But Fredy had to try. While Mother and I took a cab to

the airport, he tried to put wings on the old car. As soon as we arrived, we convinced the clerk at the desk that Mother had a ticket and that it, plus her passport, would arrive soon."Please, please wait for her." Now came the slow torture of seeing the clock

tick away. Would he make it on time? If not, how many days would she have

to wait for another flight?"Sorry, Senora," the clerk said, "but we cannot wait any longer."Just as he finished the sentence, we heard over the loudspeaker, "The flight has

been delayed by half an hour." Hurrah, we still had a chance. Again we paced

back and forth, but no car, no handbag. He should have been back. Where

was he?Once more the clerk approached us, shaking his head, and said, "Sorry, this is

it." Just as we had given up hope, I saw a black spot racing at high speed toward us. With brakes screeching, Fredy came to an abrupt halt as he tossed out

the bag."What happened? Why did you take so long?""I searched through the whole house, even under the beds but could not find

the bag. Finally, defeated, I went to the bathroom and there it sat on top of the

toilet." "Oh, no," Mother burst out with tears of laughter and relief, "What

would Freud have said to that." And happily waving her bag, she climbed on

the plane. (Horney, 1999, pp. 101103).This is how Mother helped us to be true to ourselves, to the child within.REFERENCEHorney, R. (1999). Lazarus, Whats next? A memoir, Laguna Beach, CA: LaurelPress.