Karen Horney and Feminine Psychology

After her dissertation, Karen Horney's first published writings were articles on feminine psychology. In these essays, (published between 1924 and 1934), Horney took issue with Freud's ideas on femininity. Her argument developed in three stages. In the first stage (represented by her first paper on femininity, “On the Genesis of the Castration Complex in Women,” delivered at the Berlin Congress in 1922 and published in 1924), Horney was trying to reform Freud's ideas on women. At this time, she recognized the authority of libido theory, but attempted to ameliorate Freud's negative assessment of the female psyche by distinguishing a “primary” penis envy from a “secondary” form. While the former represents an early state of pregenital envy, the latter is a defensive form arising from Oedipal attachment and fear. A girl, thus, identifies with her father as a way of escaping Oedipal danger. In the second stage—articles published between 1926 and 1933—Horney was much more polemical. During this period, she argued that the concept of penis envy itself is a consequence of male narcissism, fear of women, and envy of the female capacity to bear children. While she still maintained the principle of libido theory, her radical reinterpretation of the concept of penis envy as male projection exposed the ways in which libido theory itself was premised on the devaluation of femininity. In the third stage, Horney moved beyond the polemics of libido theory to an alternative, cultural basis for explaining femininity. During this period , Horney argued that the wider cultural devaluation of women fosters a feminine sense of self riddled with conflict and self-doubt. These ideas were most fully developed in her concept of the “feminine type” (“The Overvaluation of Love,” ). This cultural approach came to form the basis of her subsequent theoretical writings.