Karen Horney women's psychology read. K. Horney's views on the psychology of women. If parents show true love towards their child, then their need for security is satisfied, forming a healthy personality

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) is an outstanding German philosopher and scientist.

Kant's philosophy is revealed mainly in his two main works: “Critique of Pure Reason” and “Critique of Practical Reason”. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he came to the conclusion that the human mind, in principle, cannot know the essence of things. Only knowledge of “phenomena” is possible, i.e. that which arises as a result of the interaction of the real world (the so-called “things in themselves”, inaccessible to knowledge) and our cognitive ability. Since “things in themselves” are unknowable, Kant concludes that it is fundamentally impossible to comprehend God, the soul, and the world. He criticizes the so-called. proof of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.

However, based on the existence in us of a moral law that unconditionally requires its fulfillment, Kant in the “Critique of Practical Reason” asserts the need to postulate the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. Because only by accepting the existence of God, who is willing and able to preserve goodness and truth, and the immortality of the soul, which allows it to improve indefinitely, is it possible to achieve that highest moral ideal, the desire for which is inherent in human nature.

Kant expresses his view on the essence of religion in these works, as well as in the essay “Religion within the Limits of Reason Only.” According to Kant, the content of religious consciousness is the concept of God as a moral legislator, and religion consists in man’s recognition of all his moral duties as the commandments of God. In “Critique of Practical Reason” he writes: “The moral law, through the concept of the highest good, as the object and ultimate goal of pure practical reason, leads a person to religion, i.e. recognition of all one’s duties as God’s commandments – not as sanctions, i.e. arbitrary and in themselves accidental determinations of someone else’s will, but as essential laws of any free will in itself.” “Religion, in matter or in object, is no different from morality, because the common subject of both is moral duties; the difference between religion and morality is only formal.”

The essence of religion, therefore, according to Kant, consists in the fulfillment of moral duty, “as the commandments of God.” Kant, in explaining his understanding of religion, says that a reasonable person can have a religion, but should not have any relationship with God, because a person knows nothing reliable about His actual existence. In the place of God in religion, he puts man with his inherent moral law. As a result, a certain universal concept of religion is created, in which it can exist without recognizing the existence of God. It is no coincidence that in his last great work, “Opus postumum,” he repeatedly wrote: “I am God.”

Kant's view of religion as a set of certain moral duties is widespread. Its main idea boils down to the assertion that it is enough for a person to be good, for this is the essence of religion. But religiosity is a secondary and optional matter. Therefore, all specifically religious requirements for a person: faith, dogmas, commandments, divine services and prayers, norms of church life are unnecessary. All this is superstition or philosophy and can be ignored. This is where the so-called sermon arises. universal morality, adogmatic Christianity, unity in essence of all religions, etc.

The lack of spirituality and essentially atheistic nature of Kant’s view of religion is shown very well by the priest. Pavel Florensky. Analyzing the concept of holiness, he writes: “Our modern thought is inclined to equate this reality [of another world] with moral strength, meaning by holiness the fullness of moral perfection. Such is Kant’s detour of the cult from the rear... But powerless attacks on the concepts of holiness are in vain... The very usage of words testifies against such attacks: when it is spoken of holy clothes, holy utensils, holy water, holy oil, a holy temple, and so on further, and so on, it is clear that here we are talking about perfection not at all ethical, but ontological... And if we call a person a saint, then we do not indicate his morality - there are corresponding words for such an indication - but his ...exaltedness, to his presence in spheres inaccessible to ordinary understanding... So, therefore, if it is said about a moral act: “a holy deed,” then what is meant here is not his Kantian, immanent to the world, moral orientation, but the anti-Kantian, the world is a transcendental co-essence with otherworldly energies. By calling God Holy, and Holy par excellence, the source of all holiness and the fullness of holiness... we glorify not His moral, but His Divine nature...”

Replacing holiness with morality and spirituality with morality is a deep mistake of Kant and all “Kantians”. Fulfilling moral duties without God is tantamount to sailing a ship “without a rudder and without sails.”

I. Horney and female psychology

While still teaching orthodox theory at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, Horney began to diverge from Freud on issues of penis envy, female masochism and female development and tried to replace the dominant phallocentric view of female psychology with a different one, female gaze. Initially, she tried to change psychoanalysis from the inside, but in the end she moved away from many of its prejudices and created her own theory.

In her first two articles, “On the Origin of the Castration Complex in Women” (1923) and “The Escape from Femininity” (1926), Horney sought to show that the girl and woman have only her own biological constitution and developmental patterns, which should be considered based on feminine, and not as different from men's, and not as products of their supposed inferiority in comparison with men's. She challenged the psychoanalytic approach to women as inferior to men, considering this approach a consequence of the gender of its creator, a male genius, and the fruit of a culture in which the masculine principle took over. The existing male views on women were adopted by psychoanalysis as a scientific picture of the essence of a woman. For Horney, it is important to understand why a man sees a woman in this particular perspective. She argues that men's envy of pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, women's breasts and the opportunity to feed them gives rise to an unconscious tendency to devalue all this, and that the male creative impulse serves as an overcompensation for his minor role in the process of reproduction. “Womb envy” in a man is undoubtedly stronger than “penis envy” in a woman, since a man wants to belittle the importance of a woman much more than a woman wants to belittle the importance of a man.

In subsequent articles, Horney continued to analyze the male view of women in order to show the lack of scientific knowledge. In her article “Distrust Between the Sexes” (1931), she argues that women are seen as “second-class creatures” because “at all times, the more powerful side created the ideology necessary to ensure its dominant position,” and “in this ideology, the differences of the weak were interpreted as second-rate." In Fear of Woman (1932), Horney traces this male fear to a boy's fear that his genitals are inadequate to his mother's. A woman threatens a man not with castration, but with humiliation, she threatens “masculine self-respect.” Growing up, a man continues to worry deep down about the size of his penis and his potency. This anxiety is not duplicated by any female anxiety: “a woman plays her role by the very fact of her being,” she does not need to constantly prove her feminine essence. Therefore, a woman does not have a narcissistic fear of a man. To cope with his anxiety, a man puts forward an ideal of productivity, seeks sexual “victories” or seeks to humiliate the object of his love.

Horney does not deny that women are often jealous of men and dissatisfied with their feminine role. Many of her works are devoted to the “masculinity complex,” which she defines in “Forbidden Femininity” (1926) as “a complex of feelings and fantasies of a woman, the content of which is determined by the unconscious desire for the advantages that the position of a man gives, envy of men, the desire to be a man and refusal from the role of a woman." She initially believed that a woman's masculinity complex was inevitable because it was necessary to avoid the feelings of guilt and anxiety that are a product of the Oedipus situation, but she subsequently revised her opinion. The masculinity complex is a product of male dominance in culture and the inherent dynamics of a girl's family, Horney argued.

“In real life, a girl is doomed from birth to be convinced of her inferiority, whether this is expressed rudely or subtly. This situation constantly stimulates her masculinity complex” (“Leaving Femininity”).

Speaking about family dynamics, Horney at first considered the most important relationship between the girl and the men of the family, but later the mother became the central figure in the case histories of women who suffered from a masculinity complex. In "Mother's Conflicts" (1933), she lists all those features of a girl's childhood that she considers responsible for her masculinity complex.

“Here’s what’s typical: girls, as a rule, had reasons very early to dislike their own feminine world. The reasons for this could be maternal intimidation, deep disappointment in relationships with their father or brother, early sexual experience that horrified the girl, parental favoritism over towards my brother."

All this happened in Karen Horney’s childhood.

In her work on female psychology, Horney gradually moved away from Freud's belief: “anatomy is destiny” and increasingly identified cultural factors as the source of women's problems and problems of gender-role identification. No, it’s not the male’s penis that the woman envy, but the man’s privileges. What she really needs is not a penis, but the opportunity to exercise herself, developing the human abilities inherent in her. The patriarchal ideal of a woman does not always meet her inner needs, although the power of this ideal often forces a woman to behave in accordance with it. In "The Problem of Female Masochism," Horney challenges the theory of the "original relationship between masochism and female body". This belief of some psychoanalysts simply reflects the stereotypes of masculine culture, while Horney traces a number of social conditions that make a woman more masochistic than a man. Moreover, a comparison of different cultures shows that these conditions are not universal: some cultures are more unfavorable than others for the development of women.

Although Horney devoted much of her professional life to women's psychology, she abandoned the topic in 1935, believing that the role of culture in shaping the female psyche was too great for us to make clear distinctions between this and that. In a lecture entitled "Woman's Fear of Action" (1935), Horney expressed the belief that we can only understand what the psychological difference between women and men is when women free themselves from the concept of femininity imposed by masculine culture. Our goal should not be to define the true essence of femininity, but to encourage "the full and complete development of the personality of each person." After this, she began to develop her theory, which she believed to be gender-neutral, applicable to both men and women.

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Views K. HoInvest in the psychology of women

Introduction

Karen Horney (1885-1952) is known not only as a prominent representative of neo-Freudianism (a movement that arose as a result of increasing dissatisfaction with orthodox psychoanalysis), but also as the author of her own original theory, as well as one of the key figures in the field of women's psychology.

She is the only female psychologist whose name is listed among the founders of the psychological theory of personality.

Karen Horney began her career by becoming the first woman in Germany to receive permission to study medicine. She ended up founding the American Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Psychologist and psychoanalyst Karen Horney, like Adler, Jung, Erikson and Fromm, followed the fundamental principles of Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, but later chose her own path in depth psychology.

The most important issue on which she differed with Freud was the decisive role of physical anatomy in determining the psychological differences between women and men.

Horney believed that Freud's statements about the psychology of women, especially his statements that women were driven by unconscious "penis envy", were illogical and tied to the culture of 19th century Vienna. Horney also objected to his theory of instincts and neurosis and believed that psychoanalysis and psychotherapy should adhere to a broader sociocultural orientation.

In her works, Horney emphasized the importance of cultural and social influences on personality. The impetus for the formation of a sociocultural view of personality was Horney’s three main considerations.

First, as a female psychologist, she rejected Freud's statements about women and especially his assertion that their biological nature predetermines penis envy and a tendency to stress, neurosis and depression. This was the starting point in her divergence from the orthodox Freudian position.

Secondly, during her stay in Chicago and New York, she exchanged views with such outstanding scientists as Erich Fromm, Margaret Mead and Harry StackSullivan. They strengthened her conviction that sociocultural conditions have a profound influence on the development and functioning of the individual.

Third, her clinical observations of mental health patients she treated as a psychotherapist in Europe and the United States showed striking differences in their personality dynamics, providing evidence for the influence of cultural factors. These observations led her to the conclusion that unique interpersonal styles underlie personality disorders.

Also noteworthy are her reflections, which convey an optimistic view of humanity, based on the belief that every person has the capacity for positive personal growth.

The relevance of the study lies in the fact that Horney’s theoretical and clinical ideas have a huge response, and not only among counseling psychologists, psychotherapists and psychoanalysts. She wrote a lot specifically for people without professional training in this field, and her books are very popular today.

Horney's approach to personality is thus of more than just historical interest.

The object of study is the psychological teaching of Karen Horney.

The subject of the study is Karen Horney's scientific views on the psychology of women.

The objectives of the study are to analyze Karen Horney's views on the psychology of women.

Research objectives:

1. Describe the life path of Karen Horney.

2. Reveal the essence of K. Horney’s theory of personality.

3. Conduct an analysis of the main components of the psychology of women K. Horney.

Research methods - analysis of literary sources.

1. Prerequisites for the formation of Karen Horney as a psychoanalyst

1.1 Biography of Karen Horney

horney psychoanalyst complex female

Future celebrity - psychologist, experienced psychotherapist and famous psychoanalyst - Karen Horney, née Danielson, was born in Germany, near Hamburg in 1885. Her father was a sea captain, a deeply religious man, convinced of the superiority of men over women. Her mother, Clotilde Ronzelen, a Danish, attractive and free-thinking woman, was 18 years younger than her husband and was distinguished by her free-thinking, which her daughter certainly inherited.

In her youth, Karen happened to accompany her father on long sea voyages, where she acquired a passion for travel and distant countries. Therefore, the understanding that she would not be able to become a sea captain like her father (“she would not be able to be with her father”) was a painful experience for young Karen; she encountered these experiences more than once in her patients.

But her decision to take up medicine - already at the age of 14, Horney decided to become a doctor - an unusual choice for a woman in the early twentieth century - was made under the influence of her mother.

The goal was achieved in 1906, when she entered the University of Freiburg and became the first woman in Germany to be allowed to study medicine.

Most Horney's childhood and adolescence were tormented by doubts about his merits, aggravated by a feeling of external unattractiveness, depression and neurosis. She compensated for her feelings of unworthiness by becoming an excellent student. She later admitted: “Since I couldn’t become a beauty, I decided to become smart.”

At university she met Oscar Horney, a political science student who became a famous lawyer, and married him in 1910.

After graduating from the University of Berlin (1913) as the best student in the group, Horney specialized in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Horney received her medical degree from the University of Berlin in 1915.

Over the next five years, she studied psychoanalysis (which its founder Sigmund Freud was actively developing at the time) and psychotherapy at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Almost all this time, Horney suffered from stress and severe bouts of depression and one day, as her biographers report, she was saved by her husband while attempting suicide.

By 1926, Horney's marriage began to crumble as her personal problems mounted. The sudden death of her brother, the divorce of her parents and their death within one year, growing doubts about the value of psychoanalysis - all this led her to a completely depressed state (close to neurosis, when she herself needed the help of a psychologist).

Having lived with her husband for twenty-eight years and raised three daughters, in 1937, due to differences in interests, Karen eventually divorced her husband, and from that time on she devoted herself entirely to the psychoanalytic movement.

However, even before divorcing her husband in 1927, she began to have a successful career in psychotherapy (as a psychiatrist). She worked at the Berlin Psychiatric Institute and was very passionate about teaching, writing scientific papers and traveling.

Undoubtedly a talented physician and researcher, Horney became a doctor of medicine at the age of twenty-eight, and by thirty she was already one of the recognized teachers of the newly opened Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Already one of her first articles, “On the origin of the castration complex in women,” brought her European fame.

K. Horney underwent personal analysis from Hans Sachs, one of Z. Freud’s closest associates and the founder of the first Psychoanalytic Committee (1913), and she received the qualifications of a training analyst from Karl Abraham, whom Z. Freud considered his most capable student.

Psychoanalytic training and personal analysis from such faithful followers of Freud, it would seem, should have contributed to unconditional adherence to the ideas of classical psychoanalysis.

However, Horney, almost from her first works, began to actively polemicize with the creator of psychoanalytic theory, and it must be admitted that in a number of cases this polemic was quite productive.

The reason for this unexpected “confrontation” is most clearly revealed by Horney herself. In 1926, in her work “The Escape from Femininity,” she wrote: “Psychoanalysis is the creation of a male genius, and almost all who developed his ideas were also men. It is natural and natural that they were focused on studying the essence of male psychology and understood more about the development of men than women.” It is difficult to disagree with this reproach, as well as with the fact that only a differentiated approach to male and female psychology opens the way to the development of a philosophy of an integral personality.

Holism or the “philosophy of integrity,” which unites the objective and the subjective, the material and the ideal, formed the basis of all Horney’s conceptual approaches.

A significant role in the life of Karen Horney was played by Franz Alexander, who, having declared his departure from psychoanalysis and leaving Berlin because of this, in fact, talentedly implicated analytical approaches in American social psychology.

In many ways, K. Horney followed a similar path to the creation of the science of female psychology. It was F. Alexander who invited Karen Horney to Chicago in 1932 as deputy director of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute.

This was already the second psychoanalytic institute in the USA. The first one was opened in 1930 in New York. To guide it, Dr. Sandor Rado (1890-1972) was invited from Berlin, who brought with him the spirit of orthodoxy and tradition that existed at the Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis.

F. Alexander had broader views and largely contributed to overcoming the isolation of psychoanalysis and its arrival at universities and colleges in the United States.

After working together for about two years, Alexander and Horney admitted that their further collaboration was impossible, as each had their own path.

K. Horney leaves for New York, where in 1941 he organizes the American Institute of Psychoanalysis, and later becomes the founding editor of the American Psychoanalytic Journal. She owns dozens of studies, articles and books, among which the most famous are “The Neurotic Personality of Our Time” and “Women’s Psychology.”

In 1932, during the Great Depression, Horney moved to the United States. She was hired as assistant director at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Two years later, she moved to New York, where she lectured at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and provided psychological assistance to patients as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. Her increasing divergence from Freudian doctrine led the institute to disqualify her as an instructor in psychoanalysis in 1941. Shortly thereafter, she founded the American Institute of Psychoanalysis. Horney served as dean of the institute until her death from cancer in 1952.

1.2 Sociocultural theory: basic conceptual provisions

The formation of a sociocultural view of personality psychology was influenced by three main considerations by Karen Horney.

First, she did not accept, and ultimately rejected, the statements of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, regarding women, especially his assertion that their biological nature predetermines unconscious penis envy. This was the starting point in her divergences from orthodox psychoanalysis.

Secondly, thanks to close contacts with scientists such as Erich Fromm, Margaret Mead and Harry StackSullivan, her conviction grew stronger that sociocultural conditions have a more profound influence on the development and functioning of the individual, on the formation of neurosis and depression, than was postulated in classical psychoanalysis.

Third, her clinical practice demonstrated striking differences in the personality dynamics of her patients, providing evidence for the influence of cultural factors. These observations led her to the conclusion that unique interpersonal styles underlie personality disorders.

Horney recognized S. Freud’s statement about the importance of childhood experiences for the formation of the structure and functioning of personality in an adult: “S. Freud’s greatest achievement is the postulate according to which there is no fundamental difference between pathological and “normal” phenomena, that pathology is only more distinct, as if under a magnifying glass shows the processes occurring in all people.”

But, despite the commonality of this and some other basic positions, both scientists disagreed on the issue of the specifics of personality formation.

Horney did not accept Freud's assertions about the existence of universal psychosexual stages and that the sexual anatomy of the child unconsciously dictates a certain direction of further personality development. According to her beliefs, the decisive factor in personality development is the social relationship between the child and parents.

According to Horney, childhood is characterized by two needs: the need for satisfaction and the need for security. Satisfaction covers all basic biological needs: food, sleep, etc., but they do not play the main role in the formation of personality. The main thing in a child’s development is the need for safety. In this case, the fundamental motive is to be loved, desired and protected from a dangerous and hostile world.

The child is completely dependent on his parents to satisfy this security need.

If parents show true love towards their child, then their need for security is satisfied, forming a healthy personality.

Conversely, if parental behavior interferes with the satisfaction of the need for security, pathological personality development is very likely.

Moments in the behavior of parents that frustrate the child’s need for security: unstable, extravagant behavior, ridicule, failure to fulfill promises, excessive care, as well as showing clear preference for his siblings.

But the main negative, personally destructive result of such mistreatment by parents is the development in the child of an attitude of basal hostility (according to Horney - “basal distrust”). In this case, the child finds himself in an ambivalent situation: he depends on his parents and at the same time feels resentment and indignation towards them.

This conflict “triggers” such a defense mechanism as repression.

As a result, the behavior of a child who does not feel protected in the parental family is determined by a sense of his own powerlessness, feelings of fear, love, hatred of parents and guilt for this hatred, which acts as a psychological defense, the purpose of which is to suppress hostile feelings towards parents in order to survive. This often leads the child to depression.

According to the psychoanalytic understanding of the phenomenon of transference, repressed feelings of resentment and hostility, the origin of which are the parents, are manifested in all relationships of the child with other people, both in the present and in the future. In such a case, they say that the child’s psychology is characterized by basal anxiety, “a feeling of loneliness and helplessness in the face of a potentially dangerous world.”

Basic anxiety - an intense and pervasive feeling of insecurity - is one of Horney's fundamental concepts.

Unlike Freud, Horney did not believe that anxiety was a necessary component in the human psyche. Instead, she argued that anxiety results from a lack of security in interpersonal relationships. Anything that destroys a child’s sense of security in relationships with parents leads to basic anxiety. Accordingly, the etiology of neurotic behavior should be sought in the disturbed relationship between the child and the parent.

If a child feels loved and accepted, he will feel safe and will likely experience healthy development.

To cope with the feelings of insecurity, helplessness and hostility inherent in basal anxiety, the child is forced to resort to various defensive strategies. Horney described ten such strategies, called neurotic needs, or neurotic tendencies.

These are the needs:

- in love and approval, manifested in an insatiable desire to be loved, to be an object of admiration from others; in increased sensitivity and susceptibility to criticism, rejection or unfriendliness towards people who are critical (or perceived as such).

- in the managing partner. At the same time, there is an excessive dependence on others and a fear of being rejected or being left alone; overvaluation of love, because there is a belief that love can solve everything.

- in clear restrictions, i.e., a preference for a lifestyle in which restrictions and established order are of paramount importance; undemandingness, contentment with little and subordination to others.

- in power, i.e., dominance and control over others as an end in itself; contempt for weakness, which is taken to be softness, compliance, loyalty, tolerance and other human qualities.

- exploiting others. This is caused by the fear of being used by others or the fear of looking “stupid” in their eyes, but the unwillingness (inability, impossibility) to do anything to outsmart them.

- in public recognition - a strong desire to be an object of admiration from others, when the idea of oneself is formed depending on social status.

- in admiration of oneself. The desire to create an embellished image of oneself, devoid of flaws and limitations; the need for compliments and flattery from others.

- in ambition. A strong desire to be the best, regardless of the consequences; fear of failure.

- self-sufficiency and independence. Avoidance of any relationship that involves taking on any obligations; distancing from everyone and everything.

- in impeccability and own infallibility. Trying to be morally infallible and blameless in every way; maintaining an impression of perfection and virtue.

Horney argued that these needs are present to varying degrees in all people. Their satisfaction helps to cope with the feelings of rejection, hostility and helplessness that are inevitable in life.

However, a neurotic person, reacting to various situations, is not able to obtain satisfaction from each of them. It is capable of satisfying only one of all possible needs. This is what neurotic “sharpness” consists of.

A healthy person freely replaces one need with another, if changing circumstances require it, satisfies one need after another, and if one cannot be satisfied, then satisfying another brings the same effect, preventing one from feeling frustrated and unhappy.

Thus, a neurotic, unlike a healthy person, chooses one need, the satisfaction of which only allows him to feel comfortable in all social interactions, which ultimately leads him to stress: “If he needs love, he must receive it from friend and foe, from employer and shoe shiner." The need of a neurotic definitely has a neurotic character if a person tirelessly tries to turn its satisfaction into a way of life.

Horney later identified three main categories of needs, each of which represents a strategy for optimizing interpersonal relationships in order to achieve a sense of security in the outside world. In other words, their action should lead to a decrease in the level of anxiety and the achievement of a more or less satisfying life. Each strategy is accompanied by a certain orientation in relationships with other people.

People-oriented (compliant type) involves a style of interaction characterized by dependence, indecisiveness and helplessness. The person Horney classifies as the compliant type is driven by the irrational unconscious belief: “If I give in, I won’t be touched.”

The compliant type needs to be needed, loved, protected and led. Such people enter into relationships with the sole purpose of avoiding feelings of loneliness, helplessness, or uselessness. However, their politeness may mask a repressed need to behave aggressively. Although such a person seems to be embarrassed in the presence of others and keeps a low profile, this behavior often hides hostility, anger, and rage.

The compliant type described in literature is Molchalin from “Woe from Wit” by A. Griboyedov.

Orientation from people (a separate type) as a strategy for optimizing interpersonal relationships is found in those individuals who adhere to the defensive attitude: “I don’t care.” People Horney classifies as aloof are driven by the mistaken belief, “If I withdraw, I'll be fine.”

The isolated type is characterized by the attitude of not allowing oneself to be carried away in any way, whether it is a love affair, work or leisure. As a result, they lose true interest in people, get used to superficial pleasures - they simply go through life dispassionately. This strategy is characterized by a desire for privacy, independence and self-sufficiency.

This type includes a large number of modern people - from marginalized people (homeless people) and informal people (goths, emo) to fanatics of computer games and social networks, who have little ability to communicate off-line.

Orientation against people (hostile type) is a style of behavior characterized by dominance, hostility and exploitation. A person belonging to the hostile type acts based on the illusory belief: “I have power, no one will touch me.”

The hostile type holds the view that all other people are aggressive and that life is a struggle against everyone. With this he justifies his own hostility: “I’m not attacking, but defending myself. They were the first to start!” He considers any situation or relationship from the position: “What will I get from this?”, regardless of what we are talking about - money, prestige, contacts or ideas. Horney noted that the hostile type is capable of acting tactfully and friendly, but his behavior is ultimately always aimed at gaining control and power over others. Everything is aimed at increasing one’s own prestige, status or satisfying personal ambitions. Thus, this strategy expresses the need to exploit others and gain social recognition and admiration.

From Horney's point of view, these are fundamental strategies in interpersonal relationships that each of us uses at some time. Moreover, these strategies are in a state of constant conflict with each other, both in a healthy and in a neurotic person.

However, in healthy people this conflict does not carry such a strong emotional charge as in patients with neuroses. A healthy person is characterized by great flexibility, he is able to change strategies according to circumstances. And the neurotic is unable to make the right choice between these three strategies when he solves problems that confront him or builds relationships with others. He uses only one of three coping strategies, whether it is suitable in this case or not. Thus, a neurotic, compared to a healthy person, behaves less effectively when deciding life problems.

2. Karen Horney's views on female psychology

Karen Horney did not agree with many of the statements of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, regarding women.

She completely rejected his view that women unconsciously envy the male penis and reproach their mothers for being deprived of this organ.

She also considered the opinion of Freud, who argued that a woman unconsciously strives to give birth to a son and thus symbolically gain a penis, to be erroneous.

Horney explained the fallacy of such statements by the fact that psychoanalysis was created by “a male genius, and almost everyone who developed the ideas of psychoanalysis was men.”

The result of disagreement with the official theory is Horney's disqualification as a personal psychoanalyst and exclusion from the ranks of psychoanalysis.

However, Horney achieved more than just criticism of Freud. She created her theory of the psychology of women, containing A New Look on differences between men and women in the context of sociocultural influences.

Horney, drawing on her clinical practice, argued that women often feel inferior to men because their lives are based on economic, political and psychosocial dependence on men.

In the “man’s world” in which we live, women were (often still are) treated as second-class creatures, not recognizing the equality of their rights with the rights of men and being raised to accept male “superiority”.

Social systems, with their male dominance, constantly make women feel dependent and inadequate.

Horney argued that many women strive to become more masculine, but not out of penis envy. She viewed women's "overestimation" of masculinity as a manifestation of a desire for power and privilege: "The desire to be a man can be an expression of the desire to possess all those qualities or privileges that our culture considers masculine - such as strength, courage, independence, success, sexual freedom , the right to choose a partner.”

Horney also drew attention to the role contrasts that many women suffer from in relationships with men (even to the point of developing depression or neurosis), particularly highlighting the contrast between the traditional female role of wife and mother and more liberal roles such as choosing a career or pursuing other goals . She believed that this role contrast explains the neurotic needs that we can see in women in love relationships with men.

2.1 Attitude to the castration complex

Karen Horney's views on the psychology of women have undergone significant changes in the process of her work, ranging from full support for the theory of psychoanalysis of S. Freud and ending with its deep rethinking and reworking.

Thus, in the Report at the VII International Psychoanalytic Congress in Berlin in September 1922, “On the Origin of the Castration Complex in Women,” Horney demonstrates his full commitment to the views of orthodox psychoanalysis on the problem of castration: “... our understanding of the nature of this phenomenon has not changed significantly. Many women, both in childhood and adulthood, periodically or even constantly experience suffering associated with their gender. Specific manifestations of the mentality of women, arising from a protest against the fate of being a woman, originate from their childhood passionate desire to possess their own penis. The unacceptable idea of one's own original deprivation in this respect gives rise to passive fantasies of castration, while active fantasies are generated by a vindictive attitude towards a man in a privileged position.

But already in this report there is a theme of doubt, even some kind of disagreement with the official point of view on the problem: “... the fact that women feel defective precisely because of their genitals is accepted as an axiom. Perhaps, from the point of view of male narcissism, everything seems too obvious here... However, it is an overly bold statement that half of humanity is dissatisfied with their gender and can overcome this dissatisfaction only in special favorable conditions, seems completely unsatisfactory, and not only from the point of view of female narcissism, but also of biological science.”

Horney asks a question, the search for an answer to which throughout her life led her to create a psychology of women different from the psychology of men: is the castration complex found in women, which can lead not only to the development of neurosis, but also poses a threat to the healthy formation of character? or even the entire future fate of women (completely normal, capable of any practical activity), are based solely on the unsatisfied desire to have a penis? Or is this just a pretext behind which other forces are hidden, the dynamic beginning of which is familiar from the mechanism of the formation of neuroses?

Horney does not simply ask this question, although the very posing of such a question is dangerous for orthodox psychoanalysis. Horney proposes to answer this question, and offers several methodological approaches, one of which (ontological), in her opinion, is clinical practice.

Thus, examining the frequent desire of his patients to urinate like a man, Horney sees the reason for such a desire not in the castration complex, but in the feeling of injustice that is born from sexual inequality in society: “... it is especially difficult for girls to overcome the desire to masturbate, since they feel that, because of differences in body structure, they are unfairly prohibited from doing things that boys are allowed to do... difference in body structure can easily lead to a bitter sense of injustice, and thus the argument later used to justify the rejection of femininity (namely, that men enjoy greater sexual freedom) appears to be due to genuine experiences in early childhood.”

Thus, Horney says that in a society where some features of an individual (anatomical structure, defects in anatomy or physiology, specific behavior, etc.) can become the basis for socio-cultural prohibitions, these very features can serve as the basis for the formation personality structures. With the removal of these prohibitions, the personality structure can be formed differently.

To paraphrase the words of Karen Horney herself (about “American Indian girls and little Trobriand girls”), one might wonder whether the desire to urinate like a man is present in little girls, for example, Mongolian girls, whose cultural customs and clothing features allowed them (in Karen’s time Horney, in any case) to fulfill their natural needs as openly (and as directly) as men?

Thus, already at the beginning of his psychoanalytic career, Horney begins to doubt the correctness of the applicability of psychoanalytic maxims to women without taking into account the peculiarities of female psychology.

In the future, her conviction that it is impossible to approach the assessment of the characteristics of a woman’s psychology from the point of view of male psychological teaching.

Already a mature psychologist, Horney formulates the main prerequisites for the further development of the psychology of women by her followers (by the way, not only female psychologists, but also men):

1. The situation of the “Oedipus complex” does exist, but as a special case. Relationships between the sexes are a field of many general, special and individual problems that cannot be reduced to any one formula.

In times of matriarchy, law and custom centered around the mother, and “matricide” was then (as Sophocles and other ancient authors testify) a more serious crime than parricide. During the era of the invention of writing, men began to play a leading role in politics, economics, legislation and sexual morality. There were many reasons for this. One of them is probably that a man is more rational, more capable of depersonalizing himself, “socializing his psyche.” But this is also its weakness, its inconsistency with modernity, which again emphasizes the importance of a holistic, individualized personality. Women re-enter the fight for equality.

2. A man honors a woman as a Mother who feeds, cares, and sacrifices herself. The life-giving power of a woman fills men with admiration. But “it is disgusting for a human being to feel admiration and not hold a grudge against someone whose abilities one does not possess.” A man envies a woman and seeks to compensate for his inability to bear children by creating a state, religion, and art. Therefore, the entire culture bears the imprint of masculinity.

By opposing gender equality, “male culture” infringes on women in various ways. Maternity is poorly protected by law. Pregnancy and child-rearing, which require enormous physical and mental expenditure from a woman and are the main reason for a woman’s “cultural lag,” are almost not compensated for. There is an indulgence in the sexual irresponsibility of men and the reduction of women to the role of a sexual object.

3. Another reason for mistrust and even hostility between the sexes is that a man is afraid of a woman as a sexual being. In many African tribes, men believe that women have magical power over their genitals. A man is also inclined to think that a woman takes away his power during sexual intercourse, takes away his life-giving seed. The attitude towards a woman is associated with the fear of death: whoever gives life has the right to take it away.

Confirmation of this mystical fear was the unprecedented destruction of women under the banner of the fight against witches (“Hammer of the Witches”), the whole fault of which was that the men themselves lusted for women and could not resist this lust (“Notre Dame Cathedral” by V. Hugo ).

4. A man is more dependent on a woman than she is on him. He is afraid of not satisfying a woman, of being impotent, of humiliating himself in front of her. A woman's sexuality frightens him more than it attracts him. He would rather the woman simply be a sex object. For a long time, any sexual activity on the part of a woman was considered a deviation, and frigidity was considered the norm. For the smooth satisfaction of your sexual desires a man must keep a woman in a state of obedience, or, more simply, in slavery, which is what takes place in everyday life and the public economy.

In mythological fantasy, a man would like to see a woman “immaculate”, devoid of sexual desires, only in this case she is completely safe for him. The cult of the Virgin Mary is apparently connected with this. The denigration of the feminine principle is also evident in the story of Adam and Eve. For some reason, Eve was made from Adam's rib, rather than Adam emerging from Eve's body. A woman in the Old Testament is interpreted as a temptress and seducer.

5. Distrust and hostility towards a man also exist in the female psyche, but they are usually associated with childhood experience. The “paradise of childhood,” which forgetful adults often talk about, is nothing more than an illusion. A girl is disadvantaged more than a boy in childhood. She is more forbidden, less is allowed. As a child, she develops a feeling of guilt and fear of physical strength. This is eloquently evidenced by the dreams of girls, in which a woman’s fear arises when meeting snakes, wild animals, monsters that can defeat her, take possession of her, or break into her body. The girl intuitively feels that her future depends not on her, but on someone else, on a mysterious event that she is waiting for and which she is afraid of. Trying to avoid these experiences, the girl goes into the “male role.” This is especially noticeable between the ages of four and ten years. During puberty, noisy boyish behavior disappears, giving way to girlish behavior - humiliated and corresponding to a social role that is often seen as dangerous and undesirable.

Thus, Horney convincingly argues that the price of accepting the female role is a greater tendency towards neuroticism than in men. Sometimes - ambition, desire for power, desire to “take the whole man.” Sometimes - emphasized modesty, passivity - as if they thought that she wanted something from the man. Finally, frigidity is common among women.

2.2 Female masochism

One of the most controversial views of Karen Horney can be considered her views on the problem of female masochism.

December 26, 1933 In Washington, Horney makes a report at a meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, in which, by her own admission, she brings up for discussion a problem that “affects the very foundations of determining the place of women in culture.” This problem is masochism.

Horney cites facts that indicate that in European culture the masochistic phenomenon is more common in women than in men.

There are two approaches to explain this observation. The first is an attempt to find out whether masochistic tendencies are inherent in female nature itself. The second is to assess the role of social conditions in the origin of differences in the frequency of masochistic tendencies that exist between the sexes.

Before Horney, in psychoanalytic literature the problem was considered only from the point of view of female masochism as a mental consequence of the anatomical difference between the sexes. Psychoanalysis thus provided its scientific apparatus to support the theory of the primordial relationship between masochism and the female body. The possibility of social conditioning had not been considered from a psychoanalytic point of view before Horney.

Horney sets himself and the psychoanalytic community the task of trying to uncover the relationship between biological and cultural factors in this problem, as well as considering the validity of the psychoanalytic data available on this subject and asking whether the psychoanalytic method can be used to study the possible social conditioning of this phenomenon.

Orthodox psychoanalytic views are:

The specific satisfaction that a woman seeks and finds in sexual life and motherhood is masochistic in nature;

The deep content of early sexual desires and fantasies related to the father is the desire to be mutilated, that is, castrated by him;

Menstruation has a hidden meaning of experiencing a masochistic experience;

In sexual intercourse, a woman secretly strives for violence and cruelty, or - on the mental plane - for humiliation;

The process of childbearing gives her unconscious masochistic satisfaction, as well as maternal responsibilities towards the child;

If a man is characterized by masochistic fantasies or actions, this is an expression of his subconscious desire to play the role of a woman.

As a result, an unsightly and disappointing situation arises for the woman: either accept her female role and receive dubious masochistic satisfaction, or try to escape her female role, achieving masculinity, but as a result lose herself as a woman without the confidence that she will be accepted in the ersatz role. men by men.

Helen Deitch suggested the existence of a genetic factor of a biological nature, which inevitably leads to a masochistic concept of the female role.

Sandor Rado pointed out the inevitable circumstance that directs sexual development along masochistic channels.

The difference of opinion was manifested in only one thing: whether special female forms of masochism represent a deviation in the development of women, or are they a “normal” female attitude.

According to psychoanalytic theory, masochistic tendencies are much more common in women than in men. Consequently, if the majority of women or all of them are masochistic in their attitude towards sex life and reproduction, then in non-sexual areas masochistic tendencies will inevitably manifest themselves much more often in them than in men.

Horney does not argue that women can seek and find masochistic satisfaction in masturbation, menstruation, sexual intercourse and childbearing. The question is how often does this happen and why does this happen, i.e., the prevalence of the phenomenon.

According to Freud, a turning point in female development occurs when a girl realizes that she does not have a penis. The shock of this discovery is expected to affect her for a long time. For this assumption, Freud had two sources of data: the desire to possess a penis, or fantasies that they once had one, revealed in the analysis of neurotic women; and observing little girls expressing a desire to have a penis too when they discover that boys have one.

For the author of psychoanalysis, these observations were enough to build a working hypothesis that masculine desires of one origin or another play a role in female sex life, and such a hypothesis has been used to explain some neurotic phenomena in women.

Horney diplomatically hints that this is a hypothesis, not a fact, and that even as a hypothesis it is not indisputable. Moreover, there is no evidence to support the claim that the desire for masculinity is a dynamic factor of primary importance not only in neurotic women, but in any woman, regardless of her personality and place in culture.

Due to limited historical and ethnological information, almost nothing is known about mentally healthy women and about women living in different cultural environments.

Thus, in the absence of data on the frequency, conditionality and proportion of the observed reaction of girls to the opening of the penis, the very assumption that this is a turning point in female development is suggestive, but not proof.

Horney asks the question: “Why should a girl turn into a masochist when she discovers that she does not have a penis?”

According to H. Deutsch: “the active sadistic libido, hitherto attached to the clitoris, is reflected from the barrier of the subject’s internal awareness of her lack of a penis... and is reflected most often in a regressive direction, towards masochism. This leap towards masochism is "part of a woman's anatomical destiny."

The only confirmation of this assumption is the sadistic fantasies of young children. This fact is directly observed in the psychoanalysis of neurotic children (as pointed out by M. Klein) and is reconstructed in the psychoanalysis of neurotic adults.

But the fact is that there is no evidence in favor of the universality of these early sadistic fantasies. Horney quips that it is not known whether they are present in Amerindian girls and little Trobriand girls.

1. That these sadistic fantasies are generated by the actively sadistic cathexis of the clitoral libido.

2. That the girl refuses masturbation on the clitoris due to narcissistic injury, having discovered the absence of a penis.

3. That libido, active-sadistic up to this point, automatically turns inward and becomes masochistic.

All three suggestions seem highly speculative to Horney. It is known that a person can be frightened by his own hostility and as a result he will prefer a passive role, but how the cathexis of the libido of an organ can be sadistic and then turn inward is a mystery to Horney.

Helen Deitch studied the genesis of femininity, by which she understood “the feminine, passive-masochistic character of the mentality of women.” Her conclusions: masochism is the main component of the female mentality.

Horney has no doubt that this is often the case with neurotic women, but the hypothesis that this is psycho-biologically inevitable for all women is unconvincing.

Further analysis of psychoanalytic views on female masochism, carried out by Horney, convincingly shows: observations made on neurotic women cannot be recklessly extended to all women, since observations in themselves mean nothing - the main thing is in their interpretation: what is acceptable “... to explain some neurotic reactions are unlikely to be useful when working with normal children or adults.”

Since masochism is the ability to derive pleasure from things that cause pain, humiliation, fear, etc., Horney discusses the principle of pleasure: “The principle of pleasure implies that a person strives to derive pleasure from any situation, even when there is not only maximum opportunity for this , even when the possibilities are scanty. Two factors are responsible for the normal course of such a reaction:

1) high adaptability and flexibility of our desire for pleasure, noted by Freud as a characteristic of a healthy person in contrast to a neurotic and

2) an automatically realized process of comparing our unbridled desires with reality, as a result of which we realize or unconsciously accept what is available to us and what is not.

The process of checking with reality is slower in children compared to adults, but a girl who loves her rag doll, although she may ardently desire the magnificently dressed princess from the window, will nevertheless have fun playing with hers if she sees that she cannot get that beauty .

A man who leads a normal sex life and suddenly finds himself in prison under such cruel surveillance that all means of sexual gratification are closed will become a masochist only if he had masochistic tendencies before.

A woman abandoned by her husband, deprived of a source of immediate sexual satisfaction and not expecting anything in the future, may react masochistically, but the more healthy balance she has, the easier she will endure temporary deprivation and find pleasure in friends, children, work or other joys of life. A woman will react masochistically to such a situation only if she has previously shown a tendency towards masochistic behavior.

Horney ironically says that if you follow the line of reasoning of an orthodox psychoanalyst, you should only be surprised that boys do not turn into masochists. Almost every little boy gets the opportunity to notice that his penis is smaller than the penis of an adult man. He perceives this as the fact that an adult - father or someone else - can get more pleasure than he himself. The idea of someone having more pleasure available to them should poison their enjoyment of masturbation. He should quit this activity. He must suffer severely mentally, and this will excite him sexually, he will accept this pain as a surrogate pleasure and from then on will be a masochist. The absurdity of this happening to boys everywhere is obvious. Why does this have to happen to girls, and even without fail?

Finally, even if we assume that the opening of the penis causes severe suffering to the girl; that the idea of the possibility of greater pleasure spoils the impression of what is available; that mental pain excites her sexually and she finds surrogate sexual pleasure in it, one should ask: what prompts her to constantly seek satisfaction in suffering?

Horney sees this as a discrepancy between cause and effect. A stone that falls to the ground will remain there until it is moved. A living organism, traumatized in some situation, will adapt to new conditions. The long-term nature of the efforts to protect themselves is not questioned, considering that the forces motivating this once-arising desire to protect themselves remain unchanged.

Freud vigorously emphasized the strength of childhood impressions; but, however, psychoanalytic experience also shows that emotional reactions that took place in childhood are maintained throughout life only if they continue to be supported by various dynamically important circumstances.

Why are male psychoanalysts so sure that a woman must almost always be a masochist?

Horney wittily answers this question: the reason is the fear of men themselves of a woman and her biological capabilities: “This is ... a mistake that psychiatrists and gynecologists made: Kraft Ebing, observing that masochistic men often play the role of suffering women, speaks of masochism as about the type of excessive enhancement of feminine qualities; Freud, starting from the same observation, suggests the existence of a close connection between masochism and femininity; Russian gynecologist Nemilov, impressed by the suffering of a woman during defloration, menstruation and childbirth, speaks of the bloody tragedy of women; German gynecologist Lipmann, impressed by how often women get sick, have accidents, and experience pain, suggests that vulnerability, irritability and sensitivity are the main triad of female qualities.” Unable to understand (read: feel) how a woman can endure this and not suffer forever afterwards, men attribute their own suffering to women.

According to Freud, there is no fundamental difference between pathological and “normal” phenomena, that pathology only shows more clearly, as under a magnifying glass, the processes occurring in all people.

This principle expands our mental horizon, but it also has limits of applicability.

In the study of female masochism, the same principle was used. Manifestations of masochism in women are discovered through observation even where they might otherwise go unnoticed: in the social encounters of women (completely outside the scope of psychoanalytic practice); in the depiction of female characters in literature; when studying women who adhere to some customs alien to us, for example, Russian peasant women who, according to a national proverb, do not feel that their husband loves them unless he beats them. In the face of such evidence, the psychoanalyst comes to the conclusion that he is confronted with a universal phenomenon operating on a psychoanalytic basis with the constancy of natural law.

One-sidedness or a positive error in the results often occurs due to neglect of cultural and social conditions, in particular due to the exclusion from the general phenomenology of women living in a different civilization with different traditions.

The Russian patriarchal peasant woman under the tsarist regime is constantly referred to in disputes to prove how deeply masochism has grown into female nature. However, this peasant woman has turned into an assertive woman these days. Soviet woman, who will undoubtedly be surprised if the beatings are talked about as a declaration of love. The changes took place in the culture, not in the personalities of women.

Generally speaking, wherever the question of the frequency of a phenomenon arises, it implies the sociological aspects of the problem. The refusal of psychoanalysts to deal with them does not exclude their existence. The lack of a sociological approach can lead to an incorrect assessment of the significance of anatomical differences and their transformation into the cause of a phenomenon that in fact is partly or even completely socially determined.

According to Horney, only a synthesis of both conditions will provide a complete understanding of the nature of the phenomenon. The problem of female masochism cannot be attributed only to the peculiarities of the anatomical, psychological and mental characteristics of a woman, but should be considered as largely determined by the culture or social environment in which a particular masochistic woman developed.

Conclusion

horney psychoanalyst complex female

Karen Horney is an amazing woman. She writes about such details that occur in the soul of a neurotic person, which many simply are not aware of. Her books are unique in their accurate descriptions of conflicts.

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Psychology of women

Preface

Increasing dissatisfaction with the classical Freudian theory eventually led to the fact that in the mid-30s a new direction began to emerge in psychoanalysis, whose representatives focused their main attention on the cultural and social conditions that determine the formation of a person’s personality, his behavior and internal conflicts. This direction was called “neo-Freudianism,” one of the most prominent figures of which, along with Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan, is undoubtedly Karen Horney, a brilliant critic of Freud and the author of her own original theory, which had a significant influence on the further development of psychoanalysis.

Karen Horney was born on September 16, 1885 in Hamburg in the family of Norwegian navy captain Berndt Danielsen, who later adopted German citizenship. He was a God-fearing, strict and stingy man, who, due to his profession, was rarely at home. Undoubtedly, Karen had a greater influence on her mother, Clotilde Ronzelen, a Dutch woman who was seventeen years younger than her husband and, on the contrary, was distinguished by free-thinking, which she managed to instill in her daughter.

Before graduating from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Berlin, Karen Horney studied at the universities of Freiburg and Göttingen. After completing her studies, she worked for several years in a psychiatric clinic. While still a student, largely under the influence of the lectures of Karl Abraham, who became, in fact, her first teacher, her interest in psychoanalysis arose, which became her life’s work.

Horney was one of the first members of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Association, and in 1920, when Max Eitingon founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, one of its first employees. Horney's colleagues included such eminent analysts as Karl Abraham and Hans Sachs, from whom she received training analysis. But still, by Horney’s own admission, the formation of her views was particularly influenced by Harald Schulz-Henke and Wilhelm Reich: Schulz-Henke - with his works on intentionality and actual conflict situations, Reich - with his ideas about defensive tendencies of character. Without a doubt, Horney's theory was also influenced by the individual psychology of Alfred Adler.

In the initial period of her activity, which lasted more than fifteen years, Horney, despite criticizing a number of Freud's positions, was still an adherent of classical, orthodox psychoanalysis. The turning point in her life was the move in 1932 from Berlin to Chicago, where she was invited as the second director of the newly created Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute by Franz Alexander. This collaboration did not last long, however, and already in 1934 Horney moved to New York.

After arriving in the United States, she spent about seven years developing her own theory. Many of its formulations reflected the social and cultural trends of the 30s and 40s in the United States, and the liberal democratic spirit that reigned in the country. She categorically protested against fundamental Freudian pessimism and constantly emphasized the inherent human potential for development and growth. Freudian biological determinism was also a target of her criticism, since she saw in it an underestimation of the socially determined aspects of neuroses. Horney gained numerous supporters among social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists. Her books, written in easy language and understandable even to non-specialists, were extremely popular - perhaps also because they were perceived as an alternative to Freud's pessimistic views of man and his therapeutic skepticism.

On the other hand, it was for her views and apostasy from orthodox psychoanalysis that Horney was attacked by her American colleagues and was expelled from the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1941. After this, Horney created the alternative Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, in which she actively worked throughout the last years of her life. Karen Horney died in New York on December 4, 1952.

Karen Horney's ideas went through several stages in their development, each of which made a significant contribution to the development of analytical theory. If her early scientific works allow us to speak of her as the founder, along with Helen Deutsch, of the science of female psychology, then in subsequent works she appears as a prominent representative of the culturalist trend in psychoanalysis and the author of one of the most developed concepts of neurotic conflict and psychological defenses.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, while still teaching orthodox theory at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, Horney began to disagree with Freud on a number of fundamental issues in her views on the psychology of women and tried to change psychoanalytic theory from within, criticizing Freud's idea of the psychological consequences of anatomical differences between the sexes. Already in her first articles, Horney sought to show that a woman has only her own biological constitution and developmental characteristics, which cannot be considered from a male perspective as some kind of inferiority. She tried to justify exclusively female psychological problems as a result of the subordinate position of women in a modern “masculine” society, the product of which is the purely male idea of \u200b\u200bwomen in psychoanalysis: “Psychoanalysis is the creation of a male genius, and almost everyone who developed his ideas were also men . It is quite natural and logical that it was much easier for them to study male psychology and that the development of men was more understandable to them than the development of women.” Based on this, she asks an unexpected question: why does a man strive to see a woman in exactly this light - and comes to the conclusion that due to the relatively small role of a man in procreation, he experiences unconscious envy of a woman and hence the desire to devalue a woman, and this envy , judging by the intensity of the discrediting tendency, men have much stronger female “penis envy.”

She explained such a male view of a woman by the need of the dominant party in society to create an ideology necessary to ensure its dominant position, seeing in a woman a source of threat to male pride. This fear, stemming from the boy’s awareness of his own inferiority, prompts the adult man to highlight the ideal of creativity, achieve sexual “victories,” or humiliate the object of his love as compensation. And vice versa, from childhood a woman does not need to prove her worth as a woman, and therefore she does not have such a narcissistic fear of a man.

However, Horney believed that many women are characterized by envy of men and dissatisfaction with their female role, which leads to the formation of a “masculinity complex.” At first she believed that this complex was inevitable, since it was through it that a woman was able to cope with the feelings of guilt and anxiety that arose as a result of the Oedipal situation. Later, however, Horney viewed it as a consequence of the predominant position of men in modern society and the influence of the social environment.

Horney also criticizes the psychoanalytic theory of the primordial masochistic role of women, showing that such a concept only reflects stereotypes of male culture, and reveals the social conditions leading to the formation of masochistic tendencies in women.

It should be noted, however, that although Horney devoted a significant part of her professional life to the problems of female psychology, she limited herself to only small essays and did not write any major works in this area. And only thanks in large part to Harold Kelman, who prepared and published a collection of her articles in 1967 under the general title “Psychology of Women,” we now have the opportunity to appreciate the contribution that Horney made to the theory of female psychoanalysis. In all these early works we find a curious mixture of ideas from classical Freudian psychoanalysis about the Oedipus complex, libido, penis envy, regression, etc., and our own ideas about the role of culture in the formation of human personality. And at the same time, we see how the emphasis in her works increasingly shifted towards the latter factors. A completely logical result of this development was Horney’s departure from orthodox psychoanalysis and the development of his own theory.

K. Horney's views on the psychology of women