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Karen Horney is known to psychoanalysts for her rejection of basic Freudian concepts, such as regression and fixation, instinctual forces, and the genetic point of view. She substituted for these concepts a formulation of blockage of growth, and considered conflicts to occur in an 'actual situation' rather than arising out of infantile conflicts. On the subject of female sexuality she is best known for her sometimes angry rejection of 'penis envy' and her frequent reference to cultural forces in the formation of psychological problems in women. For these reasons Horney is seldom read by Freudian analysts. This makes for a great loss to the general understanding of female psychology, to which Horney brought much clinical experience and some unique points of view that should be re-examined.
In this recent paperback, Harold Kelman has selected fifteen papers on female psychology written by Horney over a span of fifteen years (1922-1937) and has added an introduction covering her differences with Freud, and some comments on these papers. Unfortunately Kelman's overview of the development of Horney's thought lacks sufficient historical perspective. He stresses, as do all her followers, her differences with Freud but not the basic agreement with psychoanalytic theory which she held for many years and evidently began to question only in the late 1930's. In this book she still refers to infantile conflicts and fixations and to infantile fantasies which have resulted from a complex interweaving of life experiences, especially Oedipal rejection, body sensations, and anxieties.
Horney's work on female psychology, then, disagrees with Freud's in a much narrower range than has been generally assumed. It should be remembered, too, that Freud's ideas on penis envy and his concept of a libidinal phase in girls (called the phallic phase and evolved late in his thinking) were discussed very actively when he propounded them. Horney's papers were part of this discussion. Curiou