Discussion of “Early Papers on Women: Horney to Thompson”

It is a great pleasure for me to be here this evening as a discussant for Dr. Moulton's paper. I am in a position of commenting on the work of three exceptional women, all of whom I have admired over the years: Dr. Karen Horney, Dr. Clara Thompson, and Dr. Ruth Moulton. I have had the good fortune to know all of them: Dr. Horney when I was a candidate at this institute; Dr. Thompson as a warm personal friend during the last six to eight years of her life; and Dr. Moulton over a long stretch of time, as a friend and a colleague. Thus, this meeting tonight brings together not only three significant currents of analytic thinking, which exemplify the new interest in women, but three currents of my own life.

Many women have had interesting experiences in the last few years as a result of the new wave of feminism. What we thought was quietly and peacefully laid to rest years ago, the issue of being a woman in a man's world, what each of us thought we had come to terms with on a personal, scientific, and psychoanalytic level, is now being stirred up and reexamined, not peacefully, but in turmoil. We are bombarded with fresh emotions, professionally, socially, from our patients and colleagues of both sexes, even from our relatives and from the newspapers, the media, and psychoanalytic literature. From all sides we are now going through new experiences and new ways of thinking about men, women, the world. This new stirring of interest and doubts, this reexamining of our former conclusions, has been gaining momentum for about six to eight years, and tonight's meeting is one of its constructive products. People are reading psychoanalytic theory with new eyes and discovering hidden treasures hitherto recognized by only a few. The papers on women written by Horney lay dormant for forty years and those by Thompson, for thirty years. Dr. Moulton stated in her paper: “When I started to write about female psychology in 1965 I returned to Dr. Horney's papers and found them as exciting