Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Horney, Karen - Harry Keyishian (essay date 1981)

Harry Keyishian (essay date 1981)

SOURCE: "Karen Horney on 'The Value of Vindictiveness,'" in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 42, No. 1, Spring, 1982, pp. 21-6.

[In the following essay, which was originally presented at a conference held in February of 1981, Keyishian discusses the ways in which Horney's essay "The Value of Vindictiveness" can be used to illuminate the natures of various literary characters.]

I first came to appreciate the special value of Karen Horney's work while doing research for a study of revenge as a literary theme. Through an exploration of writings on power and punishment I progressed a certain distance with a general theory of revenge. I came to see that the main feelings underlying revengeful acts were shame, violation, and the sense of injustice. I concluded that revenge had three main aims, often intermixed, but each with its own strategies, satisfactions, and dangers.

First, revenge aims...

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