![]() ![]() ![]() I soon learned that love felt treasonous to her. But dedicating myself to identifying and uprooting her many blocks to loving? I could do that. It felt daunting to address the inability to love. I remember a young widow with, as she put it, a "failed heart"-an inability ever to love again. The rest would follow automatically, fueled by the self-actualizing forces within the patient. No, what I had to do was to identify and remove obstacles. I did not have to do the entire job I did not have to inspirit the patient with the desire to grow, with curiosity, will, zest for life, caring, loyalty, or any of the myriad of characteristics that make us fully human. "Just as an acorn develops into an oak." What a wonderfully liberating and clarifying image! It forever changed my approach to psychotherapy by offering me a new vision of my work: My task was to remove obstacles blocking my patient's path. If obstacles are removed, Horney believed, the individual will develop into a mature, fully realized adult, just as an acorn will develop into an oak tree. And the single most useful concept in that book was the notion that the human being has an inbuilt propensity toward self-realization. Remove the Obstacles to Growth When I was finding my way as a young psychotherapy student, the most useful book I read was Karen Horney's Neurosis and Human Growth. The first three chapters are reproduced here. The Gift of Therapy has 85 short chapters, each offering a suggestion or tip for therapy. ![]()
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