KAREN HORNEY'S FEMININE PSYCHOLOGY Ana Gutierrez Lopez When Freud discovered the importance of sexuality in the genesis of neurosis, showing that it is not a late acquisition in man but one intimately linked to the earliest developmental processes, and when he described the sexual behavior of boys and girls, the stages it goes through and the supposed consequences of anatomical differences, a new conceptualization of women was launched that seemed almost impossible to modify and transcend. Karen Homey is one of the psychoanalysts who, timidly at first but with considerable courage later on, brought about a revolution regarding the understanding of women as total human beings within their surrounding environment. In order to better understand this shift, let's briefly review the personal and theoretical roots of both authors, as well as their evolution and what they represent in psychology, psychopathological theory, and human relations theory. Freud and Homey differed in age by 30 years, and the span of a generation made it possible for Homey to transcend the philosophy of science in which Freud was immersed as a product of his times, the end of the 19th century. The social and cultural differences between them are wide. Freud originated within a minority group condemned to ostracism and grew up in a traditional Jewish household where the man was lord and master of the second-class woman. The family was patriarchal and Freud was his mother's favorite child. The sexual mores within which he grew up were puritan and Victorian, and it is therefore not surprising that his theory has a masculine, mechanistic, and immutable character, since those were the paradigms of science at the time. Horney, on the other hand, belongs within the changes ushered in by the 20th century with a less rigid idea of what science is about, whereby values which are not mechanically measured-such as aesthetics, ethics, relativity-were being tolerated alongside "scientific" and "exact" sciences. Born into a middle-class, Protestant family of a Norwegian ship captain who settled in Germany, Horney had during her youth plenty of contacts Ana Gutierrez Lopez, Centro Psicoanalitico de Madrid. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis © 1984 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

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with her father when she accompanied him on his trips. However, the most significant figure in Horney's childhood was her mother, a dynamic Dutch woman who, being intelligent and free thinking, encouraged her daughter to take initiatives. Homey became a physician, which was an unusual occupation for a woman at the time, and one which caused wonderment, if not opposition, from those around her. Horney was an excellent student and earned the respect of her teachers. She married Oscar Horney in 1911 and had three daughters. She started training at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and began publishing in 1917, an activity which stopped only with her death in 1952. Horney started to write about feminine psychology in 1923 with her article, "On the Origins of the Castration Complex in Women," and since then, many talks and publications progressively solidified her viewpoints on the subject within her general theoretical framework, which was increasingly different from Freud's. In the works in which Freud explicitly dealt with the subject of feminine psychology, he put forth the following principles: After following a path similar to the boy's, the sexually developing girl has to resolve two problems, namely a shift in the gender of the object and a displacement from the phallic clitoris to the vagina as a sexual organ. Prior to these two steps, the girl develops like the boy-the object of her desire is the mother, while rivalry is felt toward the father. Also, in the early stage, there is only one sexual organ for her, the phallus. The phallus does not refer to the penis (unless the penis has such peculiarities that it makes the existence of a vagina unnecessary). This organ, which rejects any bond or relationship, as Moustapha Safouan has said, is essentially in its monadic and solitary splendor, an imaginary organ, even if its image is the image of a real organ, the penis. Thus, human beings will be classified not necessarily-according to the phallic norm-as men and women, but as phallic haves and have-nots. This phallocentric conception would be-according to Freud-the most widely shared idea between boys and girls before the latter have to resolve the two aforementioned problems of divergence. As a result of all these complications, feminine evolution is difficult and incomplete. The woman has to recognize- Freud said- her castration and the implicit superiority of man. She allegedly rebels against this unfortunate fact of her biologic inferiority. The consequences of this cannot be more logical: resentment, devaluation of her negative sexual endowment, envy of the opposite sex, and a constant search for compensation of her illfate are inevitable. A possibility of "unlimited satisfaction" exiists, however, in the woman's relationship with her son-according to Freud-the most accomplished and ambivalence-free of all human relationshipssince she can transfer on to him the ambition she had to repress and she

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can, therefore, expect from him the satisfaction of all that is left in her from her masculine complex. Such complex of course persists forever, and the capacity to practice an intellectual profession, according to Freud, often represents a sublimated outcome of such repressed complex. From these and other considerations, Freud concluded that women have a limited sense of justice, that they are practically incapable of loving (since their libido is essentially narcissistic), that their social interests are weak, and that their capacity to sublimate their instincts lags behind that of men. A bit of comfort is of course added to all this by Freud's statement that, although the influence of the sexual factors is considerable, an individual woman continues to be a human being. I have summarized Freud's statements in order to help us understand better the theoretical framework that Karen Homey had to start with and the accuracy of her observations, product of her clinical experience of many years, which led her to question those premises and to develop her own views. In her first paper in 1922 (mentioned above), Horney questioned whether the castration complex has its roots in women's dissatisfaction with the lack of a penis or whether this is not just a pretext in spite of all the observations that seem to point to an opposite view. Little girls' comments demonstrate that penis envy manifests itself as a wish to be able to urinate as a male and this wish has three components. First, urethral eroticism and the narcissistic overvaluation children give excretory processes, which they associate with fantasies of omnipotence (particularly sadistic omnipotence). Then we have the scopophilic component derived from the fact that boys exhibit their penis on urination, a factor which leads to the excessive prudishness of girls and their tendency as adults to exhibit parts of their body. Last is the fact that to urinate, the boy holds his penis, a fact which may be interpreted as a permission to masturbate. It seems then that girls are more restricted in their gratification than are boys, and it could be the real fact that girls are at a disadvantage when compared with boys in their possibility for gratification. Yet it is far from proven that this primitive penis envy persists throughout life and that it is the cause of their castration complex and women's flight from womanhood. Furthermore, this penis envy does not preclude a truly deep and loving attachment to the father, and it is only when such love is repudiated that the feminine role is resented and the feminine development is impaired. It is precisely hurt womanhood that gives origin to the castration complex and later that obstructs the normal development of women by reactivating the old penis envy. Although the early papers already pointed toward a different conceptualization of feminine sexuality, it was in Horney's later work through the 1920s and 1930s that she progressivelY consolidated her theory. In "The

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Flight from Womanhood," it is stated that since psychoanalysis is the creation of a masculine genius, it is understandable that its theory of sexuality would bear this imprint. The advantage that men have over women is obvious, as is the fact that women have adapted to men's wishes and have thought to find in them their true nature. This raises the question as to how much the evolution of women, as presented by psychoanalysis, may be distorted by the application of masculine criteria. The main difference between the sexes has been so far stated to be the genital difference; this downplays the different roles played by men and women in the reproduction of the species. In a paleobiologic speculation regarding the origin of the difference between the sexes, Ferenczi postulated that the earliest copulation would have taken place between identical individuals one of which ,reached a more powerful stage of development and coerced the weaker one to undergo sexual penetration. According to him the true motivation for intercourse was the wish to return to the maternal uterus and only the male acquired the privilege of penetration. Women had to accept substitutes such as fantasy and the shared pleasure of carrying the child inside them. Thus, women would-according to this view-lack an original impulse to coitus and their satisfaction would be an indirect one, either through masochistic substitution or through identification with the child they may conceive. Added Horney: The only advantage women have over men is the dubious pleasure of giving birth. Maternity here had been conceived as a disadvantage, a burden imposed by the male as victor. In view of this devaluation of the feminine role both in copulation and in the reproductive process, one cannot help but ask what advantage masculine mentality gained if not to hide its intense envy of maternity, pregnancy, delivery, breasts, and breast-feeding. Although it would be unproductive to question which envy is greater-women's over the penis or men's over maternity-it seems to be the case that masculine envy finds more satisfactory sublimating paths. According to Freud, women compensate the lack of penis with the desire to have a child. This is how attraction for the father is developed through which the hoped for child will become a reality. Here Homey brought forth an important point that is decisive in the development of her theory. She posed the question of whether early in her development the girl has vaginal sensations of organic origin that underlie fantasies of an excessively large penis enterin 8 her by force and producing pain threatening to destroy her inside. She believed that vaginal zones have a stronger cathexis than does the clitoris and therefore incestuous wishes are referred to the vagina with subsequent feelings of anxiety and guilt. The lack of certitude that women display about their insides, based on castration fears,

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is increased by the girl's inability to inspect her genitals. In this respect, the girl is clearly at a disadvantage when compared with the boy. Under the pressure of anxiety, the girl retreats into a fictitious masculine role, which protects her from the libidinal wishes toward her father but which inevitably also, creates an inferiority feeling in her. This inferiority feeling, although painful, is less so than the anxiety and guilt produced by the original feminine wishes. Thus a great deal of the weight of penis envy originates in a regression from the Oedipal period, and it is to a great degree because of attaction toward the opposite sex that the girl develops an interest in the penis, an interest which is narcissistic at first, but which later becomes object oriented. These motives, anxiety and fear of internal damage, are a common cause of the flight toward a masculine role, and they are reinforced by the real disadvantages women experience in social life. Since her birth, the girl is subjected to a constant reminder of her inferiority, and in response she develops her masculinity complex. If we add to all this the masculine character of our civilization, we can understand why appropriate sublimation channels are hard to find for women. Besides, once unconscious masculinity wishes arise in a woman, a vicious circle develops, which make things worse: by taking refuge in a masculine role, the woman develops contempt for femininity, and in this fashion, not only is her feminine identity threatened but also any emerging feminine trends will make her feel more inferior. I now wish to emphasize the aforementioned conscious or unconscious knowledge the girl has of the vagina because I believe it helps clarify the diverging positions vis-a-vis feminine sexuality as well as the struggles between the sexes. Opinions vary regarding this knowledge. As we know, for Freud the only existing organ is the phallus, the clitoris being only a poor substitute. Although this phallocentrism is unacceptable from the point of view of the girl, it is not more acceptable from the boy's viewpoint. Although the boy distinguishes between men and women since the earliest age, he acknowledges these differences by a variety of clues, such as clothing and hair; he cannot, however, conclude that those basic differences originate in the genitals. For him everybody has a phallus according to his narcissistic view; all are like him. As Moustapha Safouan has pointed out, narcissism is thus transformed into phallo-narcissism: the subject values himself as a phallus. The girl would be free to project in her fantasy the phallic image into any part of her body including the vagina, which would become a hollow phallus. It would suffice for it to be turned inside out, like a glove, for the girl to recover her lost identity. For Melanie Klein the fact that the girl's anxiety focuses on the interior of her body explains in part why in the girl's earliest sexual organization the

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role of the vagina is obscured by that of the clitoris. In the earliest masturbatory fantasies-when her mother's vagina is transformed into a destructive organ - t h e little girl shows an unconscious notion of the vagina, even though, because of the prevalence of her oral-anal tendencies, she equates it with mouth-anus; in her unconscious, it is the genital cavity destined to receive the father's penis. It is true that such knowledge is repressed because of anxieties about her own insides, but the knowledge is there not only unconsciously, but also at a conscious level. In this respect: Klein disagreed with Helene Deutsch, for whom only girls subjected to precocious penetration are conscious of their vagina, such knowledge being otherwise delayed until puberty. For Klein the girl's fears about the inside of her body preclude the early emergence of a discrete vaginal phase in her development. The inhibition many women experience i n lovemaking is due to such anxieties which themselves may be extinguished by sexual intercourse, since the libidinous gratification received from sex cortfirms that the incorporated penis is a good object and that the vagina did not destroy it. This observation by Klein contradicts Freud's statement in "The Taboo of Virginity" that women react with aggressivity when deflowered and that, because of this, primitive people would assign someone other than the husband for the first intercourse. Freud ignored the loving gratitude of some women for the man who, for the first time, made them aware of their "unknown" organ. The need to ignore the existence of the vagina-that occult but necessary organ-seems to be related with the primitive ancestral, both symbolic and real, fear that the male has of the female. Not only in clinical practice, but in everyday life, in art, mythology, and literature, we find the same ambivalence experienced by men toward women. Need and desire are opposed by fears of death and destruction. And it is precisely in intercourse that a man has to entrust his valued organ, the penis, to a woman, only to recover it flaccid and deprived of its erectile power. Horney was of the opinion that the cessation of the erection could be symbolic:ally taken to be the proof of being weakened by the woman and that the ancient death fears, experienced as castration anxieties, could be reactivated in these moments. If the mother provides life, she can also take it away. The fears experienced toward the father and the subsequent castration anxieties regarding him, would only be a defense against the fear of the feminine genitals, the mother's. The rejection of women and the devaluation of their genitals as incomplete and castrated, as well as the wish to provide a penis for them, would represent only an attempt to ignore the existence of the vagina, that cavity which permits penetration. Why such fear? The answer to this question lies within the domain of the pregenital relations

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between the son and the mother and whether they are facilitative or inhibitory. For Homey the original fear the boy has for a woman would not represent castration anxiety but a reaction to his threatened self-esteem. Sexually speaking, the narcissistic wound would be a factor of the size of his penis, as compared to the mother's vagina, as well as his lack of capacity to satisfy the mother. This self-esteem-based anxiety leaves more or less severe scars in all men, which explains the fear of rejection and/or ridicule so often experienced by some men. To withdraw his libido from the mother, and to redirect it on himself and his genital organ would be an understandable reaction, which would rebuild his self-esteem and reinforce his phallic narcissism. Thus the genitals of the woman are denied their existence; they are ignored and suppressed. A remnant of this fear continues throughout the phallic phase, and it explains the boy's need to compete over the greater stream of urine and the size of the penis. As an adult, such fear would be translated into fear of impotence or of small size. The "tragedy" of men's pride is derived from a biological fact: They have to prove continuously their virility or copulatory capacity in front of women. In contrast, women do not need to do anything during sexual intercourse; they only have to be there. Homey is of the opinion that the achievement drive so frequent in men may originate in such sexual difference. The defense against the need to deny submissiveness and against the felt "privileged" position of women and their maternity may assume manifold shapes from a man's compulsion to conquer many women to demonstrate his virility to a need to devalue them as objects (involvement with prostitutes or with women of lower social status), but it is particularly manifest in the frequent need to undermine women's self-esteem by treating them as infantile and irresponsible creatures while at the same time selecting this type of vulnerable woman as partners and thus socially perpetuating the myth. By whatever means, whether by penis envy or by men's fear of women, it would seem as if nature has destined the sexes to oppose and distrust each other. Generally, women have submitted to men thus placing themselves in the role of victims. This has turned out to appear as the only alternative for women. What are the cultural and psychological conditions that have permitted such adaptation or, even better, maladaptation to develop? This is a question raised most pertinently by Horney. To stay with the interpretation of inferiority caused by penis envy seems superficial and accommodating. It is of course easier to explain away a woman's hostility to her husband that way than to understand how such attitudes as meanness or childishness were developed in herself. It is more expedient for a woman to think that nature has treated her unfairly than it is for her to face her unlimited

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demands on her environment. To create a sense of inferiority by the fact of being a woman would thus hide deeper causes such as a repressed ambition or a need to be constantly pampered. Another explanation for the frequent submissiveness of women could be the connection between masochism and femininity, if masochism were to be considered a psychic consequence of sexual anatomical differences. If we accept that masochistic tendencies are more frequent in women and also that life patterns follow sexual patterns, we cannot help but conclude that biologically and genetically women are programmed for masochism. These premises, shared by Helene Deutsch and partially by Sandor Rado, are in opposition to Horney's views. Homey did not accept that masochism is mainly of sexual origin, but the result of interpersonal conflict. Horney also pointed out that there has been a dearth of research into masochism and the social conditioning of women as masochistic. For Homey masochism is a way of relating whereby a person tries to attain security and satisfaction through self-effacement and submission. The outcome is often the control of others by means of weakness, the expression of hostility through suffering, and the rationalization of failure through the excuse of illness. There is no doubt that cultural factors have been at work which have reinforced masochistic attitudes iin women. Such factors are, for example, the emphasis placed on women's weakness and fragility. Women are encouraged to seek support and protection and to look for the family, husband, and children as the only source of gratification and compensation. Women may also overvalue love, have critical attitudes toward women who look for different outlets, and so on. These are all cultural factors intimately bound to societal and domestic values. No doubt, we frequently find in women the traits of the masochistic character: inhibition of the direct expression of self-assertion or aggression; appraisal of the self as weak, impaired, or inferior, with the concomitant claims that special consideration should follow; emotional dependence on the other sex; self-sacrificing attitudes as well as self-effacement; a tendency to feel used or exploited, and finally, the utilization of weakness to seduce and control the opposite sex. Biologism is thus an easy way out when society itself is reinforcing women's masochistic behaviors as in the following instances mentioned by Horney: • Blocking of proper relief channels such as expansiveness and sexuality • Restriction on the number of children while valuing women only as childbearers • Women's economic dependency on men with its corollary emotional dependency

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• Undervaluation of women as human beings with the consequent low self-confidence • Restriction of women to spheres centered mainly around emotional bondings, i.e., family • Surplus of nubile women, particularly insofar as marriage offers the only opportunity for sexual satisfaction, children, security, and social acknowledgment As these instances proliferate within the culture, they facilitate rigid ideologies about feminine nature which render women as congenitally weak, emotional, limited, dependent, and lacking autonomous thinking. Horney added: In this category is the psychoanalytic theory of masochism. It is not difficult for women to adapt to such ideology and accept their "nature." I ask myself why is such adaptation so easy? Are there advantages in such adaptation? What is being defended? What are the gains and the losses? Which could be an honorable way out for women, as equal beings to men? An undeniable fact is that families, save for a few exceptional ones, feed their children a view of "ideal" women as subdued and dependent. This image is perpetuated by mothers who, in their own way, teach their daughters the only ways of survival and happiness they know. They teach them that resentment whether conscious or unconscious, is the only allowed weapon to face the privileged oppressors; that one must love, even though one may abhor household duties, routine, and boredom; that one must hate and repudiate physical contact, even though one may love it and desire it; that weakness, submissiveness, indecisiveness, and animosity (even though perhaps unconscious) are women's best virtues; that courage, decisiveness, industry, and initiative are masculine qualities and that to display them brings about loss of love and prestige and the subsequent loneliness. Women are taught that cowardice, futility, and dependence insure women love and company. Who would not yield to such constant nonverbal message bombardment? What would be necessary in order to break this vicious cycle, which, since it was unconsciously acquired, offers women the proper arguments not to get out of it? J. Silva, in his work Pathogenesis, The Contribution of Mother and Father, suggested that there are only two ways to break out of such a cycle: (1) when a woman inherits a strong psychic constitution that allows her to transcend the situation or (2) when a woman acquires a sense of selfcriticism and curiosity that allows her to put into question her family's as well as society's values plus the courage to refuse to take the path imposed upon her. The task is a difficult one, as is the process of individuation. It would be more tempting to follow the familiar and societal dicta.

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Undoubtedly, it is not easy to part with custom, and the fear of possible damage is immeasurable. In my clinical experience some women can enjoy self-assertion, initiative, industry, human contact, the joy of a child, responsibility, companionship, and so forth, only when they have overcome the fear of the retaliative mother. The fear is not so much of what I can become, what I risk, and what I lose, but rather what I discover of "what you (mother) did not become nor allowed me to become." The issue of self-realization is not masculine or feminine in itself, but in turn a human issue. That is how I understand Horney. We shall not forget that, fortunately, there are differences between the sexes and that we will continue to be affected in our development by social and cultural factors. Such factors, however, equally affect men and women, and the fear is similar on both sides. The goal of a woman is not to prove to herself that she is not a castrated male, nor is it to castrate men and thus make us all equal. It is rather to assume the difference and to become an individual, from her innermost self, accepting the responsibility and the loneliness of being human. REFERENCES

1. Deutsch, Helene. La psicologia de la mujar. Buenos Aires: Losada, 11960. 2. Freud, S. La organizacion genital infantil (1923); Sobre ala genesis de un caso de homosexualidad femenina (1920); Algunas consecuancias psiquicas de las diferencias sexual-anatomica (1925); Sobre la sexualidad femenina (1931); La Feminidad (1932). In Obras completas. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1967. 3. Homey, Karen. Psicologia femenina. Madrid: Alianza, 1977. El nuevo psicoanalisis. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1966. Neurosis y rnadurez, la lucha por la autorrealizacion. Buenos Aires: Psique, 1967. Nuestros conflictos interiores. Una teoria constructiva de la neurosis. Buenos Aires: Psique, 1966. 4. Klein, Melanie. Contribuciones al psicoanalisis, and Psicoanalisis de ninos. In Obras completas. Buenos Aires: Paidos, 1978. 5. Safouan, Moustapha. La sexualidad femenina. Segun la doctrina freudiana. Buenos Aires: Grijalbo, 1979. 6. Silva, jorge. Psicopatogenesis: influencia de la madre y del padre, '1981; Relaciones intrafamiliares: madre y familia, 19B0. Unpublished manuscripts.