ABSTRACT
In the present article, which first appeared in 1933, Karen Horney begins by summing up Freud’s early views on the sexual development of the little girl, leading to the thesis of penis envy and heterosexual object choice, in order to question the primacy of a phallic sexuality and its consequences for an understanding of female psychology.
If Freud’s views relating to the phallic phase and penis envy were right, Horney argues, the following would also be true: overcoming ‘masculine impulses’ would be imperative to an affirmation of femininity at each critical point in the development of female sexuality; homosexuality would be more common among women; the wish to have a child would have to be secondary and substitutive; and a woman’s relation to life would have to spring from resentment.
Horney opposes the theory of penis envy on the basis of observations of little girls aged from 3 to 5 (expressions of a desire for breasts and wish for a child are common in boys of the same age, yet this has no influence on the child’s behaviour as a whole) and posits the existence of a bisexual disposition in all human beings that would disappear with the choice of a love object. She then questions Freud’s views regarding erotogenic zones and lists a series of situations in which spontaneous vaginal sensations occur as a result of general sexual stimulation. She argues that clitoral masturbation is artificially induced and thus does not reflect ‘normality’. She also refers to sexual fantasies which support her hypothesis of the existence of a vaginal sexuality and which explain anomalies such as frigidity and vaginal anxiety.
