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Examples Of Feminine And Masculine Characteristics

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2.4 Feminine and Masculine Characteristics
According to Horney femininity has “some secret relationship with masochism” (Horney,110). Horney has elaborated Freud's assumption and generalized it in calling masochism the elemental power in feminine mental life.( http://docplayer.net/28636797-Femininity-sigmund-freud-new-introductory-lectures-on-psycho-analysis-1933-lecture-iii.html) He contends that what woman ultimately wants in intercourse is to be raped and violated; what she wants in mental life is to be humiliated, menstruation is significant to the woman because it feeds masochistic fantasies; childbirth represents the climax of masochistic satisfaction. The pleasure of motherhood, in as much as they include certain sacrifices and a concern for the children, constitute a long drawn out masochistic gratification. “Because of these masochistic strivings women are more or less doomed to be frigid unless in intercourse they are or feel raped, injured or humiliated” (Horney 111). Rado holds that “woman’s preference for masculinity is a defense against feminine masochistic strivings” (Horney 111). Since according to psychoanalytic theory psychic attitudes are …show more content…

In neurotic persons, ambition may be so destructive that it because loaded with anxiety and hence has to be repressed. This is true of men as well as of women but as a result of the cultural situation, a repressed destructive ambition in a woman may express itself in a comparatively harmless symbol of a wish to be a man. What is required of psychoanalysis is to uncover the egocentric and destructive elements in the ambition and to analyze not only what led up to this kind of ambition but also what consequences it has for the personality in the way of inhibitions to love, inhibitions to work, envy of competitors, self-belittling tendencies, fear of failure and of

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