The prophetic voice of Karen Horney in the evolution of psychoanalytic female developmental theory: From Freud to contemporary revisionists
Description
This investigation presented a comparative analysis of the contributions made by Karen Horney and Sigmund Freud to the early psychoanalytic female developmental theory and examined an hypothesized relationship between their contributions and the contemporary reformulations of this theory. Major questions asked were: (1) In what ways did Karen Horney's ideas on female development differ from those of Freud and his collaborators? (2) Why were Horney's ideas refuted by Freud and why was her work virtually ignored by mainstream psychoanalysis? (3) What was the impetus for the revisions of the Freudian female theory and why were these revisions so long in coming? (4) Can it be shown that Karen Horney's original ideas on feminine development are far more closely wed to the current psychoanalytic position on female development than are Freud's? The method of investigation included: (1) tracing the authorship of the original psychoanalytic female theory over the four decade course of its inception and maturation, (2) outlining the points of contention between Freud and Horney, (3) investigating and illuminating the impetus for revisions to the original female theory that have arisen since the 1970s, (4) documenting the instances in which Karen Horney was overlooked by contemporary theorists despite the striking similarities between their alterations and Horney's original formulations, (5) culling out the major revisionist's themes in the current reformulations of the female theory, and (6) making a comparative analysis between these revisionist's themes and Horney's and Freud's original formulations Findings confirmed that Karen Horney's early psychoanalytic formulations about female development are much closer to the efforts of current psychoanalytic theoreticians than the classical Freudian paradigm. This is true despite the lack of acknowledgment from psychoanalytic theoreticians of any merit to Horney's early proposals about female psychosexuality and the disappearance of Horney's work following her disagreement with Freud