Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

HORNEY’S NEO-FREUDIAN PERSPECTIVE 
Karen Horney (pronounced “HORN-eye”) was one of the earliest psy-
chologists to champion women’s issues and is sometimes called the fi rst 
feminist psychologist. Horney suggested that personality develops in the context of 
social relationships and depends particularly on the relationship between parents 
and child and how well the child’s needs are met. She rejected Freud’s suggestion 
that women have penis envy; she asserted that what women envy most in men is 
not their anatomy but the independence, success, and freedom women often are 
denied (Horney, 1937; Miletic, 2002; Smith, 2007). 
Horney was also one of the fi rst to stress the importance of cultural factors in 
the determination of personality. For example, she suggested that society’s rigid gen-
der roles for women lead them to experience ambivalence about success because they 
fear they will make enemies if they are too successful. Her conceptualizations, devel-
oped in the 1930s and 1940s, laid the groundwork for many of the central ideas of 
feminism that emerged decades later (Eckardt, 2005; Jones, 2006). 
ADLER AND THE OTHER NEO-FREUDIANS 
Alfred Adler, another important neo-Freudian psychoanalyst, also considered Freud-
ian theory’s emphasis on sexual needs misplaced. Instead, Adler proposed that the 
primary human motivation is a striving for superiority, not in terms of superiority 
over others but in a quest for self-improvement and perfection. 
Adler used the term inferiority complex to describe situations in which adults 
have not been able to overcome the feelings of inferiority they developed as children, 
when they were small and limited in their knowledge about the world. Early social 
relationships with parents have an important effect on children’s ability to outgrow 
feelings of personal inferiority and instead to orient themselves toward attaining 
more socially useful goals, such as improving society. 
Other neo-Freudians included Erik Erikson, whose theory of psychosocial devel-
opment we discussed in earlier modules, and Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud. Like 
Adler and Horney, they focused less than Freud on inborn sexual and aggressive 
drives and more on the social and cultural factors behind personality.
Karen Horney was one of the earliest proponents of 
women’s issues.