PSY 310: Women In Psychology By Karen Horney

person both in her own time and in psychology’s history” (Goodman, 1980, pg. 5, para.

Karen Horney would give a lecture titled The Distrust Between the Sexes. This is basically about how men and women are different. She gives many reasons as to how they are, but the top ones are physically, hostility, emotionally, with attitude, intellectually, and with childhood conflicts. She was born in 1885 and died in 1952. Suzanne Raitt writes, “In 1922, at a panel over which Sigmund Freud presided during a meeting of the Psychoanalytic Congress, a young Berlin-trained psychoanalyst delivered a paper that began one of the fiercest and longest debates in psychoanalytic theory. The analyst--the first woman ever to deliver a paper on feminine psychology at an international psychoanalytic meeting--was Karen Horney, and the paper, "On the Genesis of the Castration Complex in Women," was her famous response to the claim of her own psychoanalyst, Karl Abraham, that all women unconsciously envy the penis and want to be men. As she gave her paper, Horney was nervous but respectful. She carefully acknowledged the extraordinary significance of Freud 's work before going on to deliver a searing analysis of the masculinist bias of most of his theories on women. This challenge to Freudian psychoanalytic theory set the tone for Horney 's subsequent career.”Karen Horney’s The Distrust Between the Sexes identifies three

Personality is a concept that will continue to studied and improved upon. Theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl G. Jung, Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, and Heinz Hartmann and several others have contributed significant ideas to the study of personality and have had impacts on our current approaches. The purpose of this paper is to compare two sources of the motivations concerning why people behave the way they do. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic approach will be discussed and compared to the approach of neo-analyst Karen Horney. Karen Horney claimed that psychoanalysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts and she offered a uniquely feminist perspective for her time that disputed the Freudian theory of penis envy.

In the middle of Horney's paper she gets into the traits of male psychology. She gives many examples of how men hold women in high esteem, but writes that they have a secret distrust of women. One of Horney's best examples would have to be the story of Adam and Eve. The story devalues women's ability to give birth, and makes them seem to be sexual temptresses. It is the sexually attractive female that man is afraid of. Women are considered to be deeply rooted in their emotions. This is often men's excuse for

Freud’s theory of personality examined the interplay between the primitive, instinctual urges—the ‘id’; the practical and rational ‘ego’; and the morally attuned ‘superego’; ‘object relations’ refer to the "object" of an instinct”, which is “the agent through which the instinctual aim is achieved”—most often a person and, according to Freud, most often the mother (Ainsworth 1969, p. 1). The psychosexual development theory that Freud launched reduces our behaviour to mechanistic responses to an instinctive need for pleasure fueled by the ‘libido’ and barriers or distortions to the gratification of the libido at various delineated stages of development were responsible for later problems in life (Kail & Zolner 2012, p. 5). Erik Erikson later added depth to the approach by including more humanistic elements to Freud’s stages and including more periods of development (p.

Karen Horney is one of the preeminent figures and founders of modern psychoanalysis. Although her ideas are not widely taught today or accepted as a basis of psychoanalysis in and of themselves, her ideas of social and environmental influences are “integrated into modern psychoanalysis therapies and personality development theory” (Quinn). She was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud and was one of his early followers. Yet Horney joined the class of neo-Freudians after her research and writing led her to develop and establish psychoanalytical theories that ran counter to Freud's ideas. She objected to the Freudian psychology of women, which instigated the search for her own theories for the causes of neurosis. This in turn led to her

Neo-Freudian psychologists were people who were heavily influenced by Freud in their theories. These psychologists studied Freud’s theories in depth and later came to somewhat reject his views. They adapted portions of his theories, but changed certain aspects of his views to make it fit their personal beliefs and studies. Karen Horney was one of the more popularized Neo-Freudians of her time and still remains as one of the most famous ones in history. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views. This fact was very true of her theories of sexuality and of the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis. Horney is also credited with the founding of Feminist Psychology in response to Freud’s theory of penis envy. She disagreed with

Since these women made their breakthrough there has been more and more women contributing their knowledge to many areas in psychology such as, Anna Freud, who became influenced by her father’s theories and created her own theories in psychoanalysis. Karen Horney who contributed a substantial amount to the personality theory and later became interested in feminine psychology, Melanie Klein and Mary Ainsworth, just to name a few.

Dr. Horney’s second cause, as she explains, can be traced to “certain traits of male psychology” (343). The basic paradox of man’s attitude towards women is, “even men who consciously have a very positive relationship with women and hold them high in high esteem as human beings.” They get this from the experience they had from their mothers. Then, she goes to the “attitudes of men towards women during various eras of history and in different cultures.” Also, she insists in regards to “sexual relationships with women, but also, and often more so, in nonsexual situations, such as in their general evaluation of women” (344). She then gives us an example: Adam and Eve. She tells us that “the Old Testament is outspokenly patriarchal.” She argues that there is “no maternal goddess.” Then, she goes on to remind that the two stories in the bible are both “male bias.” She thinks that the stories of Adam and Eve “have damaged the relationship between the sexes from the earliest times to the present” with two elements: “one born out of resentment, the other out of anxiety.”

Karen Horney was born in Blankenese, Germany, on September 16, 1885. She attended medical school and began studying psychoanalysis. Horney moved to the United States in the 1930s and wrote two influential and controversial works, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time and New Ways in Psychoanalysis, which deviated sharply from Sigmund Freud's work. She died in New York City on December 4, 1952.

This research paper will compare and contrast two of the most influencial psychologists who helped shape the way we understand the development of the human mind; Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson. The paper will focus on the similarities and differences between Freud’s Psycho-sexual theory, and Erikson’s psychosocial theory. Freud was one of the very first influencial psychologists who changed the way we study humans. Erikson recognized Freud’s contributions, and although he felt Freud misjudged some important dimensions of human development, he was still influenced by Freud, which caused some similarities in their theories.

Karen Horney and Alfred Adler are two very similar yet different neo-analytic theorists. At first glance, it may appear that Horney stole some of Adler's best ideas. It is, of course, quite conceivable that she was influenced by Adler. It is clear, for example, that Horney’s three neurotic solutions are very close to Adler's personality typology. Horney proposed a series of strategies used by neurotics to cope with other people and Adler developed a scheme of so called personality types that he intended to illustrate patterns that could denote a characteristic governed under the overall style of life.

When we study the history of psychology one might assume there were minimal female contributors, but that is a big misconception. Women in the past struggled with discrimination and many hurdles to gain recognition for their work. Women psychologists have gone largely unrecognized, unappreciated, and almost unseen to historical accounts. The lack of acknowledgement for women psychologists in today’s study takes away from the comprehensive study to our generation. It is exceedingly important that we receive a well-rounded education of all the great psychologists in history and not only the male founders. The following women I will discuss mention only a few who have made an influence in psychology.

Nonetheless, the idea of penis envy becomes extremely important when examining Freud’s view on women for several reasons. Freud based the majority of his work on female sexual and personality development around penis envy, and Freud held the view that considered penis envy as natural and universal in all women (Slipp 16). According to Freud, the realization by the little girl that they had no penis was the defining moment in the realization of a female’s sexual identity. In The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney, Marcia Westkott comments: “In sum, the Freudian concept of penis envy explains all one needs to understand of female behavior” (53). Freud

From a Freudian perspective human development is based on psychosexual theory. From a psychosexual perspective maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development (Shaffer et al., 2010). Ultimately, Freud believed that sex was the most important instinct and any mental disturbance revolved around sexual conflicts that were suppressed from childhood. Furthermore, Freud believed that parents permitting too much or too little gratification of sexual needs led