Karen Horney on Self-Analysis

“All these attempts suggest that it is an easy matter to recognize oneself. This is an illusion, a belief built on wishful thinking, and a positively harmful illusion at that. People who embark on that promised easy road will either acquire a false smugness, believing they know all about themselves, or will become discouraged when they are blocked by the first serious obstacle and will tend to relinquish the search for truth as a bad job. Neither result will happen so easily if one is aware that self-analysis is a strenuous, slow process, bound to be painful and upsetting at times and requiring all available constructive energies.”
Karen Horney, Self-Analysis