The Neuroses of New York
Recently, a woman entered taxi driver Marc Preven’s cab just outside of FAO Schwartz on Madison and East 60th with her “son,” a Jack Russell terrier. “She tells me, ‘It’s his birthday,’” Mr. Preven recalled. “Then she says that every year on his birthday she takes him to FAO Schwarz to pick out a toy. This year the dog picked out a Paul Frank plush monkey. But you know, that’s not even weird to me anymore—it’s like, don’t all dogs get to go to FAO Schwarz on their birthday and pick out a birthday toy?”
In 1936, Karen Horney, a Neo-Freudian psychoanalyst who once had an ill-fated affair with pioneering social psychologist Erich Fromm, published what was then the definitive work on neurosis, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time. Naturally, she was a New York City resident at the time. (Brooklyn, actually.) Read More
