Culture, gender, and the feminist revolt inside psychoanalysis.

Karen Horney stood at the podium with a steady gaze, the low hum of anticipation filling the lecture hall. It was 1941 in New York City, and she was about to address a crowd of psychoanalysts and students on why she had broken away from orthodox Freudianism. This was not just an academic lecture – it was a declaration of independence. As she surveyed the expectant faces, Karen could not help but recall the winding path that had brought her here, from a rebellious girlhood in Germany to this pivotal moment of asserting her own vision of psychology. She cleared her throat, heart pounding not with fear but with conviction, and began to speak of ideas that Sigmund Freud himself would surely have bristled at.

Decades earlier, on a gray morning in 1880s Hamburg, a young Karen Danielsen peered out the window of her family’s home, wondering what future the world held for a girl like her. Born on September 16, 1885, in the Blankenese district of Hamburg, Germany, Karen had come into a household governed by contradictions. Her father, Berndt Danielsen, was a sea captain and a devout, authoritarian Protestant known in the family as “the Bible-thrower” for his harsh literalism. By contrast, her mother Clotilde – “Sonni” – was more liberal and nurturing, yet prone to bouts of depression and irritable dominance. In this environment, the sensitive and intelligent Karen learned to navigate both cold severity and stormy emotion. She sought refuge in books and in her own diary, where she sketched out dreams far beyond the confining walls of her childhood.

Selenius Media & Niklas S Osterman

Episode Title: Alfred Adler – The Striving for Superiority

Podcast: Pioneers of Psychology and Psychiatry Season 1: The Birth of the Mind (1860–1930) Produced by Selenius Media & The Artificial Laboratory.

In this episode, we turn to Alfred Adler, the Viennese doctor who believed that what truly drives human behavior is not sex, fear, or fate — but the will to overcome. A sickly child who once overheard a doctor say he would not survive, Adler grew up determined to prove him wrong. That early struggle shaped his lifelong conviction that humans are defined by their striving — their urge to rise above weakness and find belonging.

Breaking away from Freud’s focus on the unconscious, Adler founded Individual Psychology, a vision of the person as a unified, goal-directed being. He argued that every act, every dream, every ambition hides a single question: How can I matter? Feelings of inferiority, he said, are not flaws but sparks that push us to grow — or, if left unchecked, to dominate others.

This episode traces Adler’s rebellion against Freud, his work in Vienna’s working-class clinics, and his belief that mental health depends on Gemeinschaftsgefühl — social interest, the feeling of being part of something larger than oneself.

Adler’s ideas about equality, purpose, and the human need for connection would echo through education, therapy, and modern self-help. His was a psychology of courage — one that saw every life as a story of overcoming.

In this episode, we enter the world of Carl Gustav Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who broke away from Freud to pursue a deeper vision of the mind — one that reached beyond the personal into the collective. For Jung, the psyche wasn’t just a battlefield of repressed desires; it was an ancient landscape filled with myths, archetypes, and symbols that spoke to all of humanity.

He called it the collective unconscious — the vast, inherited memory of our species. From this realm emerged the archetypes: the Hero, the Shadow, the Anima, the Wise Old Man — timeless patterns that shape our dreams, our stories, and our sense of self.

Jung’s journey was both scientific and spiritual. He experimented with the boundaries of reason, studied alchemy and religion, and kept meticulous records of his own visions — what would become The Red Book. Through his theory of individuation, he taught that the goal of life is not perfection, but wholeness: to confront our own shadows and integrate them into a unified self.

This episode explores Jung’s split with Freud, his descent into the depths of the unconscious, and his lifelong quest to bridge science, myth, and meaning. His ideas still echo in modern psychology, art, and storytelling — a testament to one man’s belief that the symbols of the inner world are as real as the outer one.

Bonus Song "A Long Way Home" (plays at the end)

Episode Title: Carl Jung – The Shadow and the Self

Podcast: Pioneers of Psychology and Psychiatry Season 1: The Birth of the Mind (1860–1930) Produced by Selenius Media & The Artificial Laboratory.