Male envy and fear in Karen Horney’s work

Abstract

Throughout her work, psychoanalyst Karen Horney has addressed various aspects of female sexual development, from the formation of the castration complex in women to maternal conflicts. She proposed ideas that help us understand the influence of social context on the development of psychoanalytic theory and allow us to rethink the centrality that Freud gave to castration anxiety and penis envy in his theory. Although her primary interest was in female sexuality, the author theorised and described unprecedented facts about male development, particularly male envy, and fear. Despite its relevance, this aspect of her thought remains little known and explored. The aim of this article is to present Horney’s hypotheses on male development through a conceptual analysis of four texts published between 1926 and 1932, in which the theme in question is addressed.