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Karen Horney
Karen Horney (pronounced "Horn-eye", 1885-1952) was a German-American
psychoanalyst She is usually classified as "neo-Freudian").
Horney was born in Hamburg into a Norwegian-Dutch family.
Like Sigmund Freud, she placed great importance on childhood experiences.
However, she was more concerned with social relationships, especially
with parents, whereas Freud emphasized internal conflicts. She created
the concept of basic anxiety, a child's insecurity and doubt when a parent
is indifferent, unloving, or disparaging. This anxiety, according to Horney,
leads the child to hostility toward his or her parents. The child may
then become neurotic as an adult.
Horney, like many later psychologists, challenged many of Freud's ideas
as being misogynist, particularly his concept of penis envy. Horney countered
with the claim of "womb envy", that males perceived females
as being inferior largely due to males' inability to give birth. She also
downplayed Freud's theory of Oedipal complex.
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