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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