I. Horney and female psychology. Women's psychology. Karen Horney Women's psychology Karen Horney

Int. J. Psycho-Anal., VII (1926)

In some of his last writings, Freud draws attention with increasing concern to a certain one-sidedness of our analytic investigations. I am referring to the fact that, until recently, the minds of men and boys have been predominantly the object of psychoanalysis.

The reason is obvious. Psychoanalysis is the creation of a male genius, and almost everyone who developed his ideas was also a man. It is natural and natural that they were focused on studying the essence of male psychology and understood more in the development of men than women.

However, an important step towards understanding the specifics of female psychology was taken by Freud himself, who discovered the existence of penis envy. Soon, in the work of Van Ofuizen and Abraham, it was shown what a great role this factor plays in the development of a woman and in the formation of her neurosis. The cause of penis envy has been revealed relatively recently in the phallic phase hypothesis, which states that during the period of infantile genital organization in both sexes only one sexual organ, namely the male, is given importance. This is what distinguishes the infantile genital organization from the adult, final organization. According to this hypothesis, the clitoris is understood as a phallus, and we believe that initially both boys and girls consider them equal.

The phallic phase partly contributes to the further psychosexual development of the girl and partly inhibits it. Helen Deutsch in her work has demonstrated mainly the inhibitory effect. She is of the opinion that with the inclusion of each new function, that is, at the beginning of puberty, and then upon entry into an active sexual life, the onset of pregnancy and the birth of a child, this phallic phase is reactivated again and it has to be overcome every time in order to preserve the female sex role. installation. Freud regards this influence as positive, since he believes that only penis envy and its overcoming give rise to the desire to have a child and thus form the need for love based on love for the father.

The question arises: does this hypothesis give us the opportunity to expand our previous ideas about the development of women, which Freud himself considers unsatisfactory and incomplete? It is very useful for science to take a fresh look at long-known facts. Otherwise, there is a danger that we will unwittingly continue to try to fit more and more new observations into the old schemes.

The new point of view that I would like to talk about came to me under the influence of some philosophical essays by Georg Simmel. He expresses and develops the idea, which, especially from the female point of view, is this: our entire civilization is a masculine civilization. The state, laws, morality, religion and science are all the creation of men. Simmel not only stops, like other authors, at the conclusion about the humiliated position of women, but also deepens his thought: “Art, patriotism, morality in general and social ideas in particular, justice in its everyday understanding and the objectivity of scientific theories, the energy and depth of life - all these categories in their essence and content belong to humanity as a whole. But in terms of their real historical content, they are masculine through and through. Suppose that all these values, considered as absolute, we will define the single word "objective". Then we will find that in the whole history of mankind the equality "objective-male" has a decisive force.

Simmel believes that the reason why it is so difficult to accept this historical fact is that the very standards by which humanity evaluates the feminine and masculine nature are “not natural, arising from the difference between the sexes, but in their very essence - masculine .. We cannot believe in a purely human civilization, which does not include the question of sex, for the simple reason that the very posing of this question is preceded by a real-life, so to speak, naive, identification of the concepts "man" and "man", concepts for which many languages ​​do not even use two different words. Let us leave for now the discussion of whether the masculine character of our civilization is a necessary consequence of the nature of the sexes, or only a consequence of the superiority of men in power, which, in fact, has nothing to do with civilization. In any case, it is the masculinity of our civilization that is the reason why, in various fields of activity, any insignificant successes are contemptuously called “female”, and the outstanding achievements of women are respectfully called “male”.

Like any science and any values, the psychology of women is considered only from the point of view of men. At the same time, based on their predominant position, men inevitably attribute objectivity to their subjective, affective attitude towards women. The psychology of women, according to Delius, is intended only to serve the desires and disappointments of men.

Let us note one more very important point of this situation: women really adapt to the desires of men and accept this adaptation as their true nature. They see (or have seen) themselves the way men want to see them, unconsciously assimilating the prompt of male thought.

If we understand the extent to which our entire existence, way of thinking and acting is adapted to the standards of men, then we should understand how difficult it is for an individual man and an individual woman to move away from them.

The question is how much, by making woman the object of study, does analytical psychology fall under the sway of this way of thinking; to what extent she had not yet overcome the phase in which only male development could be the subject of frank research. In other words, how much the evolution of women in modern psychoanalysis has been studied by male standards, and how much the idea of ​​the true nature of women has been distorted as a result.

If we look at the subject from this point of view, it will simply strike us that the ideas in psychoanalysis about the development of women (regardless of whether they are true or not) do not differ one iota from the typical ideas of boys about girls.

We are familiar with the evolution of the views of boys. Therefore, I will summarize them briefly, and for comparison, in the next column, I will place modern scientific views on women's development.

The ultra-precise coincidence of the boy's views with the scientific ones does not yet mean their truth, although I do not exclude that the infantile genital organization of the girl may indeed be as strikingly similar to the infantile genital organization of the boy, as has been believed until now.

But I think it would be worth considering other possibilities. We can, for example, follow Georg Simmel's train of thought and ask: is it possible for a woman's adaptation to a man's conception of her psyche to take place at such an early age and to such an extent as to completely suppress the little girl's own nature? Later, I will return to that moment in the girl's childhood when, as it seems to me, the "infection" of the male point of view really occurs. But it is not at all clear to me how everything given to the girl by nature can be absorbed by adaptation to the male point of view without a trace. Thus, we must consider whether the amazing parallelism between infantile and scientific views I have noted is only an expression of the one-sidedness of our observations made from the male point of view.

Naturally, such an assumption immediately provokes an internal protest, since we immediately remind ourselves of the solid ground of practical experience on which all psychoanalytic research has been based. But at the same time, our scientific knowledge tells us that this ground is not always reliable, for experience by its very nature contains a subjective factor. Our research experience is based on the material that patients bring to analysis in the form of free associations, dreams, fantasies and symptoms, as well as on our interpretations of this material and the conclusions we draw from the same material. Therefore, even in cases where psychoanalysis is applied correctly, there is always the possibility of different interpretations and generalizations.

If we try to free our consciousness from the masculine way of thinking, almost all the problems of female psychology will appear in a new light.

The first thing that strikes is that the difference between the sexes in the structure of the genitals was put at the basis of the psychoanalytic concept, while another great difference, namely, the difference in the roles of men and women in the reproduction of offspring, was not considered at all.

The influence of the male point of view on the concept of motherhood was most clearly reflected in Ferenczi's exceptionally brilliant genital theory. In his opinion, the real urge to coitus (its true, primary meaning for both sexes) is the desire to return to the mother's womb. During the period of rivalry, the man won the privilege of penetrating the womb again, if only through his genitals. The woman, who was initially in a subordinate position, was forced to adapt to the situation created by nature and was provided with a certain compensation. She had to be "satisfied" with surrogates for fantasy and, above all, with the bearing of a child whose bliss she shares. The most that she is “allowed” is perhaps only during childbirth to experience pleasure, which is denied to a man.

According to this view, the position of a woman is not a pleasant one. She has no primary impulses for sexual intercourse, or, at least, she is deprived of the right to directly, even if partially, commit it. If this is so, then the desire for sexual intercourse and the pleasure during it should be much lower for her than for a man. After all, she can enjoy only in an indirect, indirect way - by satisfying to some extent the primary desire: partly by a roundabout way of masochistic conversion and partly by identifying with the child she can conceive. However, all these are only "compensatory mechanisms". The only thing she has an advantage over a man is in the very dubious pleasure of the act of childbearing.

And then I, as a woman, am amazed: what about motherhood? And the blissful consciousness during pregnancy, that a new life is contained in you? And the unspeakable happiness of anticipation of the appearance of a new person? And the joy when it finally appears and you hold it in your hands for the first time? And the deep pleasure and satisfaction from breastfeeding and the happiness that he needs your love and care?

In a conversation, Ferenczi expressed the opinion that in the initial period [of psychosexual - M. R.] conflict, which ends so sadly for a woman, the male, as a winner, imposes on her the burden of motherhood, including everything connected with it.

Of course, from a social struggle point of view, motherhood can be seen as a burden. In our time, this is indeed a kind of "hindrance", but it is highly doubtful that this was the case in those days when man was closer to nature.

Moreover, we ascribe to penis envy a biological origin, not a social one. Without any reasoning, we argue that the feeling of social inequality appears in a woman as a rationalization of penis envy.

But from a purely biological point of view, in motherhood or in the ability to motherhood, a woman has an undeniable, but for some reason not taken into account, physiological advantage. At an unconscious level, knowledge of this advantage is contained in the psyche of men and is most clearly reflected in the strong envy of boys for motherhood. We are familiar with this envy as such, but it is hardly considered properly in its dynamics. When you begin to conduct psychoanalysis sessions with men after a fairly long practice among women, at first you are simply amazed at how strong the envy of men for pregnancy, childbearing and motherhood, for the female breast and breastfeeding.

In the light of this observation, it was natural to wonder if there is an unconscious intellectualization of this male desire, namely, in their devaluation of motherhood? They might think, for example, that a woman really just wants a penis; and when all is said and done, motherhood is only an extra burden that makes the struggle for existence difficult, and a man should be glad that he does not have to bear it.

When Helen Deutsch writes that the masculinity complex in a woman plays a greater role than the femininity complex in a man, she probably does not take into account that the envy of a man has a much greater opportunity for successful sublimation than the envy of a girl for a penis, and that it is this envy is one (and perhaps the main) of the driving forces that encourage men to create cultural values.

Our very speech, our language points us to this source of productivity in culture. In historical times, as we know, this productivity was incomparably higher in men than in women. It can be suggested that the incredible tension of the male impulse in any field of creativity comes precisely from the feeling that he plays a relatively small role in the creation of living beings, and it is precisely this that constantly pushes him to overcompensate in other achievements.

If we are right in making this connection, we are faced with the question, why does a woman not have an appropriate impulse to compensate for her penis envy? There are two possibilities: either the woman's envy is very small compared to the man's, or she compensates, although less successfully, in some other way. Facts can be cited to support both assumptions.

As proof of the greater strength of male envy, we can point out that the concept of the anatomical inferiority of a woman can exist only from the point of view of the pregenital level of development. From the position of mature sexuality, the genital organization of an adult woman is not at all flawed, since it is obvious that a woman has no less opportunities for sexual intercourse, they are simply different than those of a man. On the other hand, the contribution of a man to reproduction is incomparably less than that of a woman.

Moreover, we see that the need of men to belittle the importance of women is incomparably stronger than the corresponding need of women. And as soon as we doubt the validity of the male assessment, we can only recognize that the dogma of the inferiority of women directly follows from this unconscious male desire. But if this unconscious desire is the real basis of the theory of female inferiority, then we must conclude that the envy that generates it is extremely strong.

In favor of the view that women are less successful at sublimating their penis envy than men are at sublimating their motherhood envy is also evidenced by the latter's contribution to culture. We know that in favorable cases this feeling of envy in a woman develops into a desire for a husband and a child and, perhaps, thus leads to a decrease in the strength of the stimuli that impel to sublimation. In unfavorable cases, as I will show in more detail later, this envy is overloaded with feelings of guilt and cannot be fruitful, while the male inability to motherhood is probably felt simply as an inferiority and therefore can, without any internal prohibitions, turn into a powerful driving force.

In this discussion I have already touched upon a problem that Freud has recently brought to the fore, namely the question of the origin of the desire to have a child. During the last decade, our attitude to this problem has changed. Let me briefly outline the beginning and end of the historical evolution of views.

The original hypothesis was that penis envy provides libidinal reinforcement for both the desire for a child and for a man, although these desires arise independently of each other. Then the main emphasis in theoretical constructions shifted more and more to penis envy, and in his last work Freud suggested the idea that the desire to have a child grows entirely out of penis envy and disappointment at his absence, and tender attitude towards the father arises only from this. in a roundabout way: from the desire to have a penis and through the desire to have a child.

This last hypothesis obviously comes from the need to explain heterosexual attraction from a biological and physiological point of view. It corresponds to the problem posed by Groddek, who states that it is perfectly natural for a boy to be attracted to his mother as an object of love, "but how is it that a little girl is attracted to the opposite sex?"

To approach this problem, we must first understand that our empirical material regarding the masculinity complex in women comes from two sources, the reliability of which differs greatly. The first is direct observation of children, here the subjective factor plays a relatively small role. Every little girl who has no reason to be overly timid expresses penis envy openly and without embarrassment. We see that this envy is typical, and understand it well enough; we understand how the narcissistic frustration of having something less than boys is reinforced by a whole series of circumstances based on the awareness of the inferiority of their position due to differences in the ability to direct the libido to the object in the pregenital phase: boys have a clear advantage in connection with urethral eroticism , scoptophilic instinct and masturbation.

I would suggest defining penis envy in a little girl as “primary”, since it is obvious that the basis of her envy is an anatomical difference.

The second source from which we draw our experience is the material obtained as a result of the application of psychoanalysis in the therapy of adult women. Naturally, it is more difficult to form a judgment here, and therefore there is more room for subjectivity. We have established that penis envy here is also a factor of tremendous dynamic force. We see patients who reject their feminine functions, and the most common unconscious motive for this is the desire to be a man.

We encounter fantasies such as: "I once had a penis", "I am a man who was castrated and mutilated." From these fantasies arise a feeling of inferiority, and from it subsequently all sorts of hypochondriacal ideas. We note a distinctly hostile attitude towards men, sometimes taking the form of contempt, and sometimes a desire to castrate or mutilate them, and we see how this hostility determines the fate of many women.

As a result, we come to the conclusion (especially natural for the masculine orientation of our thinking) that we can connect these observations with primary penis envy, and seeing with our own eyes what consequences it leads to, we consider it proven a posteriori that this envy must have an exorbitant dynamic force. . In assessing the situation more generally than in detail, we tend to ignore the fact that the desire to be a man, so familiar to us from the analysis of adult women, in this case is very weakly related to that early, primary envy of the penis and is a secondary education, embodying everything that is immature, premature in the development of femininity.

My experience has consistently convinced me that the Oedipus complex in a woman leads (and not only in extreme cases, which "end badly", but always) to regression, up to penis envy of all possible degrees and forms. The difference between the origin of the male and female Oedipus complex, it seems to me (with some averaging), is the following: the boy refuses his mother as a sexual object because of the fear of castration, but in his further development he not only asserts himself in the role of a man, but also emphasizes on her, and this accentuation is a compensatory reaction to the fear of castration. We clearly see this in the latent and pre-pubertal periods of development in boys, and in general in their later life. The girl, on the contrary, not only refuses her father as a sexual object, but also refuses the female role in general.

To understand this departure from the feminine, we must consider the facts relating to early childhood masturbation, which is the physical expression of the excitement associated with the Oedipus complex.

Here again the situation appears clearer in boys, although perhaps we simply have more information about them. But maybe the mystery of the situation in girls is just a consequence of our usual masculine view of the problem? It seems so. After all, we do not even assume that little girls have any specific form of onanism and without any hesitation describe their autoerotic activity as male. And when we realize that the difference, of course, must exist, we understand it as negative, and not as positive: that is, in the case of anxiety about onanism, the difference lies in the fact that castration only threatens some, while for others it is already took place. My analytic experience leads me to assert that in girls there is a specifically female form of onanism (which differs in technique from that which exists in boys). But even assuming that girls practice exclusively clitoral masturbation (this assumption by no means seems correct to me), I do not see why, despite the evolution of the clitoris, it cannot be considered to belong to the female genitalia and constitute their legitimate part.

It is very difficult to determine from the data obtained from the analysis of adult women whether organic vaginal sensations occur in girls at an early stage of genital development. Based on a number of cases from my practice, I am inclined to conclude that this is so, and I will refer to the materials on which my conclusion is based. That vaginal sensations should take place seems to me theoretically very possible for the following reasons. Undoubtedly, the well-known female fantasy, about how an unusually large penis makes a violent penetration, accompanied by pain and bleeding, threatening to destroy something, should indicate that the oedipal fantasies of a little girl are based in the most realistic way (in accordance with the plastic concreteness children's thinking) on ​​disproportions in the sizes of the father and the child. I also think that both oedipal fantasies and a logical fear of internal (vaginal) trauma suggest that both the vagina and the clitoris must be considered to play an independent role in the early infantile genital organization of women. . From the later phenomenon of frigidity, one can even conclude that the vaginal zone is indeed more powerfully loaded with libido than the clitoris (judging by the anxiety associated with it and the attempts to defend it); and that is why incestuous desires refer to the vagina with the unmistakable accuracy of the subconscious. From this point of view, frigidity can be interpreted as an attempt to protect oneself from fantasies that are too dangerous for the ego. This point of view, in addition, allows us to understand the cause of the unconscious feeling of pleasure, which, according to various authors, sometimes accompanies childbirth, and, on the other hand, to explain the fear of childbirth. For it is childbirth (owing to the pain arising from the discrepancy between the size of the vagina and the child) that is much better than sexual intercourse "adapted" for the subconscious realization of such early incestuous fantasies, and such a realization with which the feeling of guilt is not associated; while female genital anxiety, like castration anxiety in boys, invariably bears the stamp of guilt and owes its lasting influence to it.

The next factor acting in the same direction is a certain consequence of the anatomical difference between the sexes. I mean, boys can examine their genitals to see if the terrible consequences of onanism are taking place. Girls, on the other hand, are literally “in the dark” about this and remain in complete ignorance: are their genitals in order? Naturally, the lack of the possibility of examining oneself cannot be compared with cases of boys' acute fear of castration, but in cases of less pronounced fear, which are much more common, I think that such a distinction is very important. In any case, the material that I have collected in the course of the psychoanalysis of women has led me to the conclusion that this factor plays a significant role in the female mentality and that it contributes to that particular inner insecurity that is so often found in women. And it is under the pressure of this anxiety that the girl often seeks refuge in the role of a man.

What is the gain in leaving the female role? I will refer to the experience that probably all psychoanalysts have: they find that the subconscious desire to be a man falls, in general, on relatively favorable ground: once it has arisen, it becomes stable, as it is an expression of the desire to avoid awareness of libidinal desires and fantasies, related to the father. Thus, the desire to be a man contributes to the suppression of incestuous female desires or resistance to their "pulling into the light of God." Such a typical and constantly repeated experience leads us, if we are true to psychoanalytic principles, to conclude that fantasies about being a man are intended in the early period precisely to shield the subject from libidinal desires connected with the father. The fantasy "I am a man" allows the girl to "get away" from the female role, in this situation - too overloaded with guilt and anxiety. Naturally, an attempt to move away from the female lifestyle to the male one inevitably brings a feeling of inferiority, as the girl begins to try on other people's claims and evaluate herself by standards that are alien to her biological nature, and at the same time, of course, she is faced with the feeling that she will never can match them perfectly.

Although the feeling of inferiority is very painful, analytic experience convincingly proves to us that the Ego tolerates it more easily than the guilt associated with maintaining the female sex-role attitude, and, therefore, for the Ego it is an undoubted gain when the girl, avoiding Scylla-guilt, seeks refuge with Charybdis-inferiority.

To complete the picture, I will mention another advantage that, as we already know, a woman receives from the process of identification with her father, which occurs simultaneously with the assumption of the role of a man. Unfortunately, I cannot add anything new to what I have already stated in my earlier work.

We know that the very process of identification with the father is one of the answers to the question of why the departure from women's desires directed at the father always leads to the assimilation of the gender-role attitude of the man. Some reflection on what has already been said opens up the possibility of a different point of view on this issue.

It is known that when the libido encounters obstacles in its path, there is almost always a regression and an earlier phase of development is activated. According to Freud's last work, penis envy is the stage preceding genuine object love for the father. This line of thought, proposed by Freud, helps us to understand the inner necessity with which the libido regresses back precisely to this previous stage, regardless of when and to what extent it encounters the barrier of incest.

I agree in principle with Freud's remark that the girl moves towards object love through penis envy, but I think the nature of this evolution can be portrayed differently. Observing in cases of regression how much of the primary penis envy stems from the period preceding the Oedipus complex, we must resist the temptation to interpret all manifestations of such an elementary law of nature as the mutual attraction of the sexes only in the light of this envy.

Based on this conclusion, and faced with the question of how, then, the psychology of this primary biological principle should be understood, we would seem to have to admit that we do not know this. In fact, I am increasingly turning to the hypothesis that perhaps the causation may be completely reversed and that it is the attraction to the opposite sex, active from the earliest period, that determines the little girl's libidinal interest in the penis. This interest, depending on the level of development reached, has at first an autoerotic and narcissistic orientation, as I described earlier. If we consider these "relationships of envy" in relation to the mutual attraction of the sexes, we will face new questions related to the causes of the Oedipus complex in men, and I hope to answer them in the next article. But if we assume that penis envy is the first expression of the enigmatic mutual attraction of the sexes, it will then appear that there is nothing surprising in the fact that analysis reveals its existence in even deeper time layers than that in which the desire to have a child and tender attachment to the father develop. can be prepared not only by disappointment at the absence of a penis, but just as well in another way. And then we must speak of a libidinal interest in the penis as a kind of manifestation of "partial love," using Abraham's term. Such love, he says, is always present as a preceding stage of truly object love. We can also explain this process by analogy with the experiences of an older age: admiring envy leads directly to a loving relationship.

As for the extreme ease with which a return to envy occurs, I must refer to a certain analytical discovery. In the patient's associations, the narcissistic desire to possess one's own penis and the desire to possess the object of libidinal attraction are often so intertwined that it is sometimes difficult to understand in what sense the words "I want it" are used.

A few more words about the female fantasy of castration as such. She gave the name to the whole complex, as it is the most striking part of it. According to my theory of female development, I find it useful to consider these fantasies as a secondary education. I imagine their origin is this: when a woman takes refuge in a fictitious male role, her female genital anxiety is to some extent translated into male language - the fear of vaginal injury becomes a fantasy of castration. The girl benefits from this as it replaces the more agonizing feeling of insecurity (due to her anatomy) and expectation of punishment with a concrete idea. Moreover, since the castration fantasy itself is also in part only a bizarre shadow of the same old sense of guilt, the idea of ​​owning one's own penis becomes a welcome proof of innocence.

So, the beginning of the typical biological motives for leaving the role of a man lies in the Oedipus complex. But later they are reinforced and supported by real discrimination against women's labor in society. Of course, we must admit that the desire to be a man, when it comes from this source, is an excellent rationalization of unconscious motives. But we must not forget that discrimination is part of our reality and that in fact it is much stronger than most women realize.

Georg Simmel says in this connection that "the great importance attributed to man in social terms is perhaps due to his position of superior power" and that historically the relationship of the sexes can be roughly described as that of master and slave. And here, as elsewhere, "one of The privilege of the master is that he does not have to constantly remember that he is the master, while the slave can never forget that he is the slave.

This privilege perhaps explains the underestimation of discrimination in the psychoanalytic literature. In real life, a girl is doomed from birth to be convinced of her inferiority, whether it is expressed rudely or subtly. This situation constantly stimulates her masculinity complex.

I will give some more considerations. Due to the fact that our civilization has hitherto had a purely male character, it was much more difficult for a woman to achieve a sublimation that would really satisfy her nature, because all ordinary professions have always been designed for men. This aggravated her feelings of inferiority, since she naturally could not achieve the same as a man, and it began to seem to her that this was the real basis for her discrimination. It is difficult to assess to what extent the unconscious motives for leaving femininity are determined by the real social inequality of women. It would be natural to assume the connection and mutual influence of mental and social factors. But here I only want to point out this problem, since it is so deep and serious that it requires a separate study.

The same factors have an equally significant, but qualitatively different influence on the development of a man. On the one hand, they lead to a much stronger suppression of his feminine desires, which are stigmatized with inferiority, and on the other hand, these desires become easier to successfully sublimate.

So, I offered for discussion some of my interpretations of the problems of female psychology, which differ in many respects from existing views. It is possible, and even highly probable, that the picture I have painted seems one-sided from the male - opposite - point of view. But it was my main intention in this paper to point out a possible source of researcher gender error, and thereby take one step further towards the goal we all strive to achieve: to rise above the subjectivity of the male or female point of view and create a picture of the mental development of a woman that would be more in line with the realities of female nature - with her special qualities and their differences from the qualities of a man - than all those pictures of women's mental development that have existed so far.

K. Horney's views on the psychology of women

Introduction

Karen Horney (1885-1952) is known not only as a prominent representative of neo-Freudianism (a trend that arose as a result of growing dissatisfaction with orthodox psychoanalysis), but also as the author of her own original theory, as well as one of the key figures in the field of female psychology.

She is the only female psychologist whose name is listed among the founders of the psychological theory of personality.

Karen Horney got her start by being the first woman in Germany to be allowed to study medicine. She ended up founding the American Institute of Psychoanalysis.

The psychologist and psychoanalyst Karen Horney, like Adler, Jung, Erickson and Fromm, followed the fundamental principles of Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, but later chose her own path in depth psychology.

The most important point on which she disagreed with Freud was the crucial role of physical anatomy in determining psychological differences between women and men.

Horney believed that Freud's statements about the psychology of women, especially his claims that women are driven by unconscious "penis envy", are illogical and tied to the culture of 19th century Vienna. Horney also objected to his theory of instincts and neurosis and believed that psychoanalysis and psychotherapy should adhere to a broader sociocultural orientation.

In her writings, Horney emphasized the importance of cultural and social influences on the individual. Horney's three main considerations served as the impetus for the formation of a sociocultural view of personality.

First, as a female psychologist, she rejected Freud's statements about women, and especially his assertion that their biological nature predetermines penis envy and a tendency to stress, neurosis, and depression. This was the starting point for her departure from the orthodox Freudian position.

Secondly, during her stays in Chicago and New York, she exchanged opinions with such eminent scientists as Erich Fromm, Margaret Mead, and Harry StackSullivan. Thanks to them, her conviction was strengthened that sociocultural conditions have a profound influence on the development and functioning of the individual.

Thirdly, clinical observations of patients receiving psychological assistance, whom she managed as a psychotherapist in Europe and the United States, showed striking differences in their personality dynamics, which was a confirmation of the influence of cultural factors. These observations led her to conclude that unique styles of interpersonal relationships underlie personality dysfunctions.

Also noteworthy are her reflections, which show an optimistic view of humanity, based on the belief that every person has the capacity for positive personal growth.

The relevance of the study lies in the fact that Horney's theoretical and clinical ideas have a huge response, and not only among counseling psychologists, psychotherapists and psychoanalysts. She wrote extensively specifically for people without professional training in this field, and her books are very popular today.

Thus, Horney's approach to personality is not only of historical interest.

The object of the study is the psychological teaching of Karen Horney.

The subject of the research is Karen Horney's scientific views on the psychology of a woman.

The objectives of the study are to analyze Karen Horney's views on the psychology of women.

Research objectives:

.Describe the life path of Karen Horney.

.To reveal the essence of K. Horney's theory of personality.

.To analyze the main components of the psychology of a woman K. Horney.

Research methods - analysis of literary sources.

1. Prerequisites for the formation of Karen Horney as a psychoanalyst

1.1 Biography of Karen Horney

The future celebrity - a psychologist, an experienced psychotherapist and a famous psychoanalyst - Karen Horney (KarenHorney), nee Danielson, was born in Germany, near Hamburg in 1885. Her father was a sea captain, a deeply religious man, convinced of the superiority of men over women. Her mother, Clotilde Ronzelen, Danish, attractive and free-thinking, was 18 years younger than her husband and had a free-thinking mind that her daughter certainly inherited.

In her youth, Karen accompanied her father on long sea voyages, where she acquired a passion for travel and distant lands. Therefore, the realization that she could not become a sea captain like her father (“she could not be with her father”) was a painful experience for young Karen, she met these experiences more than once with her patients.

But her decision to pursue medicine—already at the age of 14, Horney had made the decision to become a doctor—not an ordinary choice for a woman in the early twentieth century—was influenced by her mother.

The goal was reached in 1906 when she entered the University of Freiburg and became the first woman in Germany to be allowed to study medicine.

For most of Horney's childhood and adolescence, he was tormented by self-doubt, exacerbated by a sense of outward unattractiveness, depression, and neurosis. She made up for her sense of worthlessness by becoming an excellent student. She later admitted, "Because I couldn't be beautiful, I decided to be smart."

At university she met Oscar Horney, a political science student who became a prominent lawyer, and she married him in 1910.

After graduating from the University of Berlin (1913) as the best student in the group, Horney specialized in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Horney received her medical degree from the University of Berlin in 1915.

For the next five years, she studied psychoanalysis (which its founder Sigmund Freud was actively developing at the time) and psychotherapy at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Almost all this time, Horney suffered from stress and severe bouts of depression, and once, according to her biographers, was saved by her husband while attempting suicide.

By 1926, Horney's marriage began to unravel as the avalanche of her personal problems grew. The sudden death of her brother, the divorce of her parents and their death within one year, the growing doubts about the value of psychoanalysis - all this led her to a completely depressed state (close to neurosis, when she herself needed the help of a psychologist).

After living with her husband for twenty-eight years and raising three daughters, in 1937, due to differences in interests, Karen eventually divorced her husband, and from that time devoted herself entirely to the psychoanalytic movement.

However, even before her divorce from her husband in 1927, she had begun a successful career in psychotherapy (as a psychiatrist). She worked at the Berlin Psychiatric Institute and was very passionate about teaching, scientific writing and travel.

Undoubtedly a talented physician and researcher, Horney became a doctor of medicine at twenty-eight, and by thirty she was already one of the recognized teachers of the newly opened Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Already one of her first articles "On the origin of the castration complex in women" brought her European fame.

K. Horney went through personal analysis with Hans Sachs, one of the closest associates of 3. Freud and the founder of the first Psychoanalytic Committee (1913), and she received the qualification of a teaching analyst from Karl Abraham, whom 3. Freud considered his most capable student.

Psychoanalytic training and personal analysis in such faithful followers of Freud, it would seem, should have contributed to an unconditional adherence to the ideas of classical psychoanalysis.

However, Horney, almost from her first works, begins to actively polemize with the creator of psychoanalytic theory, and it must be admitted that in a number of cases this polemic was quite productive.

The reason for this unexpected "confrontation" is most clearly revealed by Horney herself. In 1926, in The Departure from Femininity, she wrote: “Psychoanalysis is the work of a male genius, and almost all who developed its ideas were also men. It is natural and natural that they were focused on studying the essence of male psychology and understood more in the development of a man than a woman. It is difficult to disagree with this reproach, as well as with the fact that only a differentiated approach to male and female psychology opens the way to the development of a philosophy of a holistic personality.

Holism or "philosophy of integrity", where the objective and the subjective, the material and the ideal are combined, formed the basis of all Horney's conceptual approaches.

A significant role in the life of Karen Horney was played by Franz Alexander, who, having declared his departure from psychoanalysis and leaving Berlin because of this, in fact skillfully implied analytical approaches to American social psychology.

In many ways, K. Horney went to the creation of the science of female psychology in a similar way. It was F. Alexander who, in 1932, invited Karen Horney to Chicago as deputy director of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute.

It was already the second psychoanalytic institute in the USA. The first was opened in 1930 in New York. Dr. Sandor Rado (1890-1972) was invited from Berlin to lead it, bringing with him the spirit of orthodoxy and tradition that existed at the Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis.

F. Alexander adhered to broader views and in many ways contributed to overcoming the isolation of psychoanalysis and its arrival in universities and colleges in the United States.

After working together for about two years, Alexander and Horney recognized that their further collaboration was impossible, since each had his own path.

K. Horney leaves for New York, where in 1941 he organized the American Institute of Psychoanalysis, and later became the founding editor of the American Psychoanalytic Journal. She owns dozens of studies, articles and books, among which the most famous are The Neurotic Personality of Our Time and Women's Psychology.

In 1932, during the Great Depression, Horney moved to the United States. She was accepted to the position of Assistant Director at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Two years later, she moved to New York, where she lectured at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and provided psychological assistance to patients as a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst. The growing divergence of her views from Freud's doctrine forced the staff of the institute to disqualify her as an instructor in psychoanalysis in 1941. Soon after, she founded the American Institute of Psychoanalysis. Horney served as dean of the institute until her death from cancer in 1952.

1.2 Sociocultural theory: main conceptual provisions

Karen Horney's three main considerations influenced the formation of a sociocultural view of personality psychology.

First, she did not accept, and ultimately rejected, the statements of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, regarding women, especially his assertion that their biological nature predetermines unconscious penis envy. This was the starting point in her divergence from orthodox psychoanalysis.

Secondly, through close contact with scientists such as Erich Fromm, Margaret Mead, and Harry StackSullivan, her conviction was strengthened that sociocultural conditions have a deeper influence on the development and functioning of the individual, on the formation of neurosis and depression, than was postulated in classical psychoanalysis.

Thirdly, her clinical practice has demonstrated striking differences in the personality dynamics of her patients, confirming the influence of cultural factors. These observations led her to conclude that unique styles of interpersonal relationships underlie personality dysfunctions.

Horney acknowledged Z. Freud's statement about the importance of childhood experiences for the formation of the structure and functioning of an adult's personality: “Z. Freud's greatest achievement is the postulate according to which there is no fundamental difference between pathological and “normal” phenomena, that pathology is only more distinct, like under a magnifying glass shows the processes taking place in all people.

But, despite the commonality of this and some other basic positions, both scientists disagreed on the issue of the specifics of personality formation.

Horney did not accept Freud's statements about the existence of universal psychosexual stages and that the sexual anatomy of the child unconsciously dictates a certain direction for the further development of the personality. According to her beliefs, the decisive factor in the development of personality is the social relationship between the child and parents.

According to Horney, childhood is characterized by two needs: the need for satisfaction and the need for security. Satisfaction covers all the basic biological needs: food, sleep, etc., but they do not play the main role in the formation of personality. The need for security is central to a child's development. In this case, the underlying motive is to be loved, desired, and protected from a dangerous and hostile world.

In meeting this need for security, the child is completely dependent on his parents.

If parents show true love in relation to the child, then his need for security is satisfied, forming a healthy personality.

Conversely, if the behavior of the parents interferes with the satisfaction of the need for security, pathological development of the personality is very likely.

Moments in parental behavior that frustrates the child's need for security: erratic, erratic behavior, ridicule, broken promises, overprotectiveness, and showing a clear preference for his siblings.

But the main negative, destructive for the personality, result of such ill-treatment by parents is the development in the child of an attitude of basal hostility (according to Horney, “basal mistrust”). In this case, the child finds himself in an ambivalent situation: he depends on his parents and at the same time feels resentment and indignation towards them.

This conflict "launches" such a defense mechanism as repression.

As a result, the behavior of a child who does not feel protected in the parental family is determined by a sense of his own powerlessness, feelings of fear, love, hatred towards parents and guilt for this hatred, which acts as a psychological defense, the purpose of which is to suppress hostile feelings towards parents in order to survive. Often this leads the child to depression.

According to the psychoanalytic understanding of the phenomenon of transference, repressed feelings of resentment and hostility, which are caused by parents, are manifested in all relationships of the child with other people, both now and in the future. In such a case, it is said that in the psychology of the child there is basal anxiety, "a feeling of loneliness and helplessness in the face of a potentially dangerous world."

Basal anxiety - an intense and pervasive sense of insecurity - is one of Horney's fundamental concepts.

Unlike Freud, Horney did not believe that anxiety is a necessary component in the human psyche. On the contrary, she argued that anxiety arises as a result of a lack of security in interpersonal relationships. All that in relationships with parents destroys the child's sense of security, leads to basic anxiety. Accordingly, the etiology of neurotic behavior must be sought in the disturbed relationship between the child and the parent.

If a child feels love and acceptance of himself, he feels safe and is likely to experience healthy development.

To cope with the feeling of insecurity, helplessness and hostility inherent in basal anxiety, the child is forced to resort to various defensive strategies. Horney described ten such strategies, called neurotic needs, or neurotic tendencies.

These are the needs:

in love and approval, manifested in an insatiable desire to be loved, to be an object of admiration from others; in increased sensitivity and susceptibility to criticism, rejection or hostility towards people who are critical (or perceived as such).

in the lead partner. At the same time, there is an excessive dependence on others and a fear of being rejected or left alone; overestimation of love, because there is a conviction that love can solve everything.

in clear restrictions, i.e., a preference for a lifestyle in which restrictions and established order are of paramount importance; undemanding, contentment with little and submission to others.

in power, i.e., dominance and control over others as an end in itself; a contemptuous attitude towards weakness, for which softness, pliability, loyalty, tolerance and other human qualities are taken.

in the exploitation of others. This results from the fear of being used by others or the fear of looking "stupid" in their eyes, but the unwillingness (inability, impossibility) to do something to outwit them.

in public recognition - the strongest desire to be an object of admiration from others, when the idea of ​​\u200b\u200boneself is formed depending on social status.

in self-admiration. The desire to create an embellished image of oneself, devoid of flaws and limitations; the need for compliments and flattery from others.

in ambition. A strong desire to be the best, regardless of the consequences; fear of failure.

in self-sufficiency and independence. Avoiding any relationship that involves the assumption of any obligations; distancing from everyone and everything.

in perfection and infallibility. Trying to be morally infallible and blameless in every way; maintaining an impression of perfection and virtue.

Horney argued that these needs are present to one degree or another in all people. Their satisfaction helps to cope with the feelings of rejection, hostility and helplessness that are inevitable in life.

However, the neurotic, reacting to various situations, is not able to receive satisfaction from each of them. He is able to satisfy only one of all possible needs. This is what neurotic "sharpness" is all about.

A healthy person, on the other hand, freely replaces one need with another if changing circumstances require it, satisfies one need after another, and if one cannot be satisfied, then the satisfaction of another brings the same effect, not allowing one to feel frustrated and unhappy.

So, a neurotic, unlike a healthy one, chooses some one need, the satisfaction of which only allows him to feel comfortable in all social interactions, which ultimately leads him to stress: “If he needs love, he must receive it from friend and foe, employer and shoe shiner." The need of a neurotic definitely has a neurotic character if a person tirelessly tries to turn its satisfaction into a way of life.

Horney later identified three main categories of needs, each of which represents a strategy for optimizing interpersonal relationships in order to achieve a sense of security in the world around. In other words, their action should lead to a decrease in the level of anxiety and the achievement of a more or less satisfying life. Each strategy is accompanied by a certain orientation in relations with other people.

Orientation to people (compliant type) involves a style of interaction that is characterized by dependence, indecision and helplessness. The person Horney refers to as the accommodating type is driven by an irrational unconscious belief: "If I acquiesce, they won't touch me."

The compliant type needs to be needed, loved, protected, and led. Such people enter into relationships with the sole purpose of avoiding feelings of loneliness, helplessness, or worthlessness. However, their courtesy may hide a repressed need to behave aggressively. Although such a person seems to be embarrassed in the presence of others, keeping a low profile, hostility, anger and rage are often hidden under this behavior.

The compliant type described in the literature is Molchalin from "Woe from Wit" by A. Griboyedov.

Orientation away from people (separate type) as a strategy for optimizing interpersonal relationships is found in those individuals who adhere to the defensive attitude: "I don't care." The people that Horney refers to as a separate type are guided by the erroneous belief: "If I step back, I will be all right."

The detached type is characterized by an attitude not to be carried away in any way, whether it is a love affair, work or leisure. As a result, they lose their true interest in people, get used to superficial pleasures - they just go through life dispassionately. This strategy is characterized by the desire for privacy, independence and self-sufficiency.

A large number of modern people can be attributed to this type - from marginals (homeless people) and informals ("Goths", "emo") to fanatics of computer games and social networks, who are incapable of communicating off-line.

Orientation against people (hostile type) is a style of behavior that is characterized by dominance, hostility and exploitation. A person of the hostile type acts on the basis of an illusory belief: "I have power, no one will touch me."

The hostile type is of the opinion that all other people are aggressive and that life is a struggle against everyone. By this he justifies his own hostility: “I do not attack, but I defend myself. They started first! He considers any situation or relationship from the position: “What will I get from this?”, Regardless of what it is about - money, prestige, contacts or ideas. Horney noted that the hostile type is able to act tactfully and friendly, but his behavior in the end is always aimed at gaining control and power over others. Everything is aimed at increasing one's own prestige, status, or satisfying personal ambitions. Thus, this strategy expresses the need to exploit others, to receive public recognition and admiration.

From Horney's point of view, these fundamental strategies in interpersonal relationships are used by each of us at some time. Moreover, these strategies are in constant conflict with each other, both in a healthy and neurotic personality.

However, in healthy people this conflict does not carry such a strong emotional charge as in patients with neuroses. A healthy person is characterized by great flexibility, he is able to change strategies according to circumstances. And the neurotic is not able to make the right choice between these three strategies when he solves the questions that confront him or builds relationships with others. He uses only one of the three coping strategies, whether it works or not. Thus, a neurotic, in comparison with a healthy person, behaves less effectively in solving life problems.

2. Karen Horney's views on the psychology of women

Karen Horney disagreed with many of the statements of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, regarding women.

She completely rejected his view, according to which women unconsciously envy the male penis and reproach their mothers for being deprived of this organ.

She also considered Freud's opinion erroneous, who claimed that a woman unconsciously seeks to give birth to a son and thus symbolically gain a penis.

Horney explained the fallacy of such statements by the fact that psychoanalysis was created by "a male genius, and almost all who developed the ideas of psychoanalysis were men."

The result of disagreement with the official theory is Horney's disqualification as a personal psychoanalyst and exclusion from the ranks of psychoanalysis.

However, Horney achieved more than just a critique of Freud. She created her theory of the psychology of women, containing a new look at the differences between men and women in the context of sociocultural influences.

Horney, drawing on her clinical practice, argued that women often feel inferior to men because their lives are based on economic, political, and psychosocial dependence on men.

In the "men's world" in which we live, women were treated (often still treated) as second-class creatures, not recognizing the equality of their rights with the rights of men and brought up to accept male "superiority".

Male-dominated social systems constantly make women feel dependent and inadequate.

Horney argued that many women strive to become more masculine, but not out of penis envy. She saw women's "overvaluation" of masculinity more as a manifestation of a desire for power and privilege: "The desire to be a man can express a desire to have all those qualities or privileges that our culture considers masculine - such as strength, courage, independence, success, sexual freedom the right to choose a partner.

2.1 Relation to the castration complex

Karen Horney's views on the psychology of a woman have undergone significant changes in the course of her work, ranging from full support for the theory of psychoanalysis by Z. Freud to its deep rethinking and processing.

Thus, in the Report at the VII International Psychoanalytic Congress in Berlin in September 1922 “On the origin of the castration complex in women,” Horney demonstrates his complete adherence to the views of orthodox psychoanalysis on the problem of castration: “... our understanding of the nature of this phenomenon has not changed significantly. Many women, both in childhood and in adulthood, periodically or even constantly experience suffering associated with their gender. The specific manifestations of the mentality of women, arising from the protest against the fate of being a woman, originate from their childhood longing for their own penis. The unacceptable idea of ​​one's original deprivation in this respect gives rise to passive fantasies of castration, while active fantasies are generated by a vindictive attitude towards a man who is in a privileged position.

But already in this report, there is a theme of doubt, even some kind of disagreement with the official point of view on the problem: “... it is accepted as an axiom that women feel flawed precisely because of their genitals. Perhaps, from the point of view of male narcissism, everything here seems too obvious ... Nevertheless, the overly bold assertion that half of humanity is dissatisfied with their gender and can overcome this discontent only in especially favorable conditions seems completely unsatisfactory, and not only from the point of view of the female narcissism, but also biological science."

Horney asks the question, the search for an answer to which throughout her life led her to create a psychology of women different from the psychology of men: is it really a castration complex found in women, which can lead not only to the development of neurosis, but is a threat to healthy character formation or even the entire future fate of women (quite normal, capable of any practical activity), is based solely on the unsatisfied desire to have a penis? Or is this just a pretext behind which other forces are hidden, the dynamic beginning of which is familiar from the mechanism of the formation of neuroses?

Horney does not just ask this question, although the very posing of such a question is dangerous for orthodox psychoanalysis. Horney offers to answer this question, and offers several methodological approaches, one of which (ontological), in her opinion, is clinical practice.

So, examining the often occurring desire of his patients to urinate like a man, Horney sees the reason for such a desire not in the castration complex, but in the feeling of injustice that is born from gender inequality in society: “... it is especially difficult for girls to overcome the desire to masturbate, as they feel that, because of their difference in body build, they are unfairly prohibited from doing what boys are allowed to do.... the difference in body build can easily lead to a bitter sense of injustice, and thus the argument later used to justify the rejection of femininity (namely, that that men enjoy greater sexual freedom) appears to be conditioned by genuine early childhood experiences.

Thus, Horney says that in a society where some features of an individual (anatomical structure, defects in anatomy or physiology, specific behavior, etc.) can become the basis for socio-cultural prohibitions, these very features can serve as the basis for the formation personality structures. With the removal of these prohibitions, the personality structure can be formed in a different way.

To paraphrase the words of Karen Horney herself (of "American Indian girls and little Trobriand girls"), one might wonder if there is a desire to urinate like a man in little girls, for example, Mongolians, whose cultural customs and peculiarities in clothing allowed them (in Karen's time) Horney, anyway) to send their natural needs as openly (and also directly) as to men?

Thus, already at the beginning of his psychoanalytic career, Horney begins to doubt the correctness of the applicability of psychoanalytic maxims to women without taking into account the peculiarities of female psychology.

In the future, her conviction that it is impossible to approach the assessment of the characteristics of the psychology of a woman from the point of view of male psychological teaching.

Being already a mature psychologist, Horney formulates the main prerequisites for the further development of the psychology of a woman by her followers (by the way, not only female psychologists, but also men):

.The situation of the "oedipal complex" takes place, but as a special case. The relationship of the sexes is a field of many general, special and individual problems that cannot be reduced to any one formula.

In the days of matriarchy, law and custom were centered around the mother and the "matricides" were then (as Sophocles and other ancient authors testify) a more serious crime than parricide. In the era of the invention of writing, a man began to play a leading role in politics, economics, legislation and sexual morality. There were many reasons for this. One of them, probably, is that a man is more rational, more capable of depersonalizing himself, "socializing his psyche." But this is also his weakness, his inconsistency with modernity, which again emphasizes the importance of a holistic, individualized personality. The woman again enters the struggle for equality.

.A man honors a woman like a Mother who feeds, cares, sacrifices herself. The life-giving power of a woman fills men with admiration. But "it is disgusting for a human being to feel admiration and not hold a grudge against one whose abilities one does not possess." A man envies a woman and seeks to compensate for his inability to bear children by creating a state, religion, art. Therefore, the whole culture bears the imprint of masculinity.

By opposing gender equality, “male culture” infringes on women in many ways. Motherhood is poorly protected by law. Pregnancy and child rearing, which require huge physical and mental costs from a woman, and are the main reason for the “cultural lag” of a woman, are almost not compensated in any way. There is an indulgence of the sexual irresponsibility of men and the relegation of a woman to the role of a sexual object.

.Another reason for distrust and even hostility between the sexes is that a man is afraid of a woman as a sexual being. In many African tribes, men believe that women have magical powers over their genitals. A man is also inclined to think that a woman takes away his strength during sexual intercourse, takes his life-giving seed for herself. The attitude towards a woman is associated with the fear of death: whoever gives life has the right to take it away.

This mystical fear was confirmed by the unprecedented destruction of women under the banner of the fight against witches (“Hammer of the Witches”), whose only fault was that the men themselves lusted for women and could not resist this lust (“Notre Dame Cathedral” by V. Hugo ).

.A man is more dependent on a woman than she is on him. He is afraid not to satisfy the woman, to be impotent, to humiliate himself in front of her. The sexuality of a woman scares him more than attracts him. He would rather have the woman just be a sexual object. For a long time, any sexual activity on the part of a woman was considered a deviation, and frigidity was considered the norm. For the unhindered satisfaction of his sexual desires, a man must keep a woman in a state of obedience, in other words, in slavery, which is what takes place in everyday life and the public economy.

In the mythological fantasy, a man would like to see a woman "immaculate", devoid of sexual desires, only in this case she is completely safe for him. Apparently, the cult of the Virgin Mary is connected with this. The debasement of the feminine principle is also evident in the story of Adam and Eve. For some reason, Eve was made from Adam's rib, and not Adam comes from Eve's body. A woman in the Old Testament is interpreted as a temptress and seducer.

.Distrust and hostility towards a man are also present in the female psyche, but they are usually associated with childhood experiences. The "Paradise of Childhood" that forgetful adults often talk about is nothing more than an illusion. A girl is more disadvantaged in her childhood than a boy. More is forbidden, less is allowed. She develops a sense of guilt and fear of physical force in childhood. This is eloquently evidenced by the dreams of girls, in which female fear arises when meeting with snakes, wild animals, monsters that can defeat her, take possession of her, break into her body. The girl intuitively feels that her future does not depend on her, but on someone else, on a mysterious event that she is waiting for and afraid of. Trying to avoid these experiences, the girl goes into the "male role". This is especially noticeable between the ages of four and ten. During puberty, noisy boyish behavior disappears, giving way to girlish - belittled and appropriate social role, which is often considered dangerous and undesirable.

Thus, Horney convincingly argues that the price of accepting a female role is a greater propensity for neuroticism than that of men. Sometimes - ambition, the desire for power, the desire to "take the whole man." Sometimes - emphasized modesty, passivity - as if they just didn’t think that she wants something from a man. Finally, frigidity common among women.

2.2 Female masochism

One of the most controversial views of Karen Horney can be recognized as her views on the problem of female masochism.

December 1933 In Washington, DC, Horney makes a presentation at a meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, in which, by her own admission, she brings up for discussion a problem that "affects the very foundations of the definition of a woman's place in culture." That problem is masochism.

Horney gives evidence that in European culture the masochistic phenomenon is more common in women than in men.

There are two approaches to explaining this observation. The first is an attempt to find out whether masochistic tendencies are not inherent in the feminine nature itself. The second is to assess the role of social conditions in the origin of differences between the sexes in the frequency of masochistic tendencies.

Prior to Horney, psychoanalytic literature considered the problem only from the point of view of female masochism as a psychic consequence of the anatomical difference between the sexes. Psychoanalysis thus provided its scientific apparatus to support the theory of an ancestral kinship between masochism and the female organism. The possibility of social conditioning from a psychoanalytic point of view was not considered before Horney.

Horney sets himself and the psychoanalytic community the task of trying to uncover the correlation of biological and cultural factors in this problem, as well as to consider the validity of the psychoanalytic data available on this score and to ask whether the psychoanalytic method can be used to investigate the possible social conditioning of this phenomenon.

Orthodox psychoanalytic ideas are as follows:

the specific satisfaction that a woman seeks and finds in sexual life and in motherhood is of a masochistic nature;

menstruation has a hidden meaning of experiencing a masochistic experience;

in the sexual act, the woman secretly strives for violence and cruelty, or - mentally - for humiliation;

the process of childbearing gives her an unconscious masochistic satisfaction, as well as maternal duties towards the child;

if a man is characterized by masochistic fantasies or actions, this is an expression of his subconscious desire to play the role of a woman.

As a result, an unattractive and disappointing situation for a woman develops: either accept her female role and receive dubious masochistic satisfaction, or try to get away from her female role, achieving masculinity, but as a result, lose herself as a woman without the certainty that she will be accepted as an ersatz- men by men.

Helen Deutsch assumed the existence of a genetic factor of a biological nature, which inevitably leads to a masochistic concept of the female role.

Sandor Rado pointed to an inevitable circumstance that directs sexual development along a masochistic channel.

The difference of opinions manifested itself in only one thing: whether the special female forms of masochism represent a deviation in the development of a woman, or are they a “normal” female attitude.

According to psychoanalytic theory, masochistic tendencies are much more common in women than in men. Consequently, if the majority of women, or all of them, are masochistic in their attitude to sexual life and reproduction, then in non-sexual areas, masochistic tendencies will inevitably manifest themselves much more often in them than in men.

Horney does not argue that women can seek and find masochistic satisfaction in masturbation, menstruation, intercourse, and childbearing. The question is how often this happens, and why it happens, that is, in the prevalence of the phenomenon.

According to Freud, a turning point in female development occurs when a girl realizes that she does not have a penis. It is assumed that the shock of this discovery will affect her for a long time. For such an assumption, Freud had two sources of data: the desire to have a penis revealed in the analysis of neurotic women or the fantasies that they once had one; and observations of little girls expressing a desire to have a penis too when they discover that boys have one.

For the author of psychoanalysis, these observations were enough to build a working hypothesis that masculine desires of one origin or another play a role in female sexual life, and such a hypothesis was used to explain some neurotic phenomena in women.

Horney diplomatically hints that this is a hypothesis, not a fact, and that even as a hypothesis it is not indisputable. Moreover, there is no evidence to support the claim that the desire for masculinity is a dynamic factor of paramount importance not only in neurotic women, but in any woman, regardless of her personality and place in culture, there is no data.

Due to the limited historical and ethnological information, almost nothing is known about mentally healthy women and about women living in different cultural environments.

Thus, in view of the lack of data on the frequency, causality, and specific weight of the observed reaction of girls to the opening of the penis, the very assumption that this is a turning point in female development is suggestive, but not proof.

Horney asks, "Why should a girl turn into a masochist when she discovers she doesn't have a penis?"

According to H. Deutsch: “The active sadistic libido, until then tied to the clitoris, is reflected from the barrier of the subject’s inner awareness of the absence of a penis ... and is reflected most often in a regressive direction, towards masochism. This leap towards masochism is "part of the female anatomical destiny".

Sadistic fantasies in young children are the only confirmation of this assumption. This fact is directly observed in the psychoanalysis of neurotic children (which M. Klein points out) and is reconstructed in the psychoanalysis of adult neurotics.

But the point is that there is no evidence for the generality of these early sadistic fantasies. Horney quipped that it is not known whether they are present in American Indian girls and little Trobriand girls.

That these sadistic fantasies are generated by an active-sadistic cathexis of the libido of the clitoris.

That the girl refuses to masturbate on the clitoris due to narcissistic trauma after discovering the absence of a penis.

That the libido, so far active sadistic, automatically turns inward and becomes masochistic.

All three assumptions appear to Horney to be highly speculative. It is known that a person can be frightened by his own hostility and therefore prefer a suffering role, but how the cathexis of the libido of an organ can be sadistic and then turn inward - for Horney this remains a mystery.

Helen Deutsch studied the genesis of femininity, by which she understood "the feminine, passive-masochistic character of the mentality of women." Her conclusions: masochism is the main component of the female mentality.

Horney has no doubt that this is often the case when it comes to neurotic women, but the hypothesis that this is psycho-biologically inevitable for all women is unconvincing.

Further analysis of psychoanalytic views on female masochism, carried out by Horney, convincingly shows that the observations made on neurotic women cannot be recklessly extended to all women, since the observations themselves do not mean anything - the main thing in their interpretation: what is acceptable "... to explain some neurotic reactions is unlikely to be useful when working with normal children or adults."

Since masochism is the ability to derive pleasure from such things that cause pain, humiliation, fear, etc., Horney talks about the principle of pleasure: “The principle of pleasure implies that a person seeks to derive pleasure from any situation, even when there are not only maximum opportunities for this. , even when the possibilities are scanty. Two factors are responsible for the normal course of such a reaction:

) the high adaptability and flexibility of our desire for pleasure, noted by Freud as a characteristic of a healthy person, in contrast to a neurotic and

) an automatically implemented process of reconciling our unbridled desires with reality, as a result of which we realize or unconsciously accept what is available to us and what is not.

The process of checking with reality is slower in children than in adults, but a girl who loves her rag doll, although she may ardently desire a magnificently dressed princess from a window, will nonetheless have fun playing with hers if she sees that she can never get that beauty. .

A man who has a normal sex life and is suddenly imprisoned under such severe supervision that all means of sexual satisfaction are closed will become a masochist only if he had masochistic tendencies before.

A woman abandoned by her husband, deprived of a source of immediate sexual satisfaction and expecting nothing in the future, may react masochistically, but the more healthy balance she has, the easier she will endure temporary deprivation and find pleasure in friends, children, work, or other joys of life. A woman will react masochistically to such a situation only if she has previously shown a tendency to masochistic behavior.

Horney says ironically that if one follows the line of reasoning of an orthodox psychoanalyst, one should only be surprised that boys do not turn into masochists. Almost every little boy gets the opportunity to notice that his penis is smaller than that of an adult male. He perceives this as the fact that an adult - a father or someone else - can get more pleasure than himself. The idea of ​​giving someone more pleasure should poison their enjoyment of masturbation. He should quit this job. He must suffer severely mentally, and this will excite him sexually, he will accept this pain as a surrogate pleasure and from then on will be a masochist. The absurdity of this happening all over the place with boys is obvious. Why should this happen to girls, and even without fail?

Finally, even assuming that the opening of the penis causes the girl severe suffering; that the idea of ​​the possibility of greater pleasure spoils the impression of what is available; that mental pain excites her sexually and she finds in this a surrogate sexual pleasure, we must ask: what prompts her to seek satisfaction in suffering constantly?

Horney sees this as a discrepancy between cause and effect. A stone that has fallen to the ground will remain lying until it is moved. A living organism, traumatized in some situation, will adapt to new conditions. The long-term nature of the efforts to defend themselves is not questioned, considering that the forces motivating this once arisen desire to defend themselves remain unchanged.

Freud vigorously emphasized the durability of childhood impressions; but, however, psychoanalytic experience also shows that emotional reactions that took place in childhood persist for life only if they continue to be supported by various dynamically important circumstances.

Why are male psychoanalysts so sure that a woman almost always has to be a masochist?

Horney wittily answers this question: the reason is the fear of men themselves of a woman and her biological capabilities: “This is ... a mistake that psychiatrists and gynecologists made: Kraft Ebing, observing that male masochists often play the role of suffering women, speaks of masochism as about the kind of excessive strengthening of feminine qualities; Freud, starting from the same observation, suggests the existence of a close connection between masochism and femininity; the Russian gynecologist Nemilov, impressed by the suffering of a woman during defloration, menstruation and childbirth, speaks of the bloody tragedy of a woman; German gynecologist Lipman, under the impression of how often women get sick, get into accidents, experience pain, suggests that vulnerability, irritability and sensitivity are the main triad of female qualities. Unable to understand (read: feel) how a woman can endure this and not suffer forever after that, men attribute their own suffering to women.

According to Freud, there is no fundamental difference between pathological and "normal" phenomena, that pathology is only more distinct, as under a magnifying glass, it shows the processes that take place in all people.

This principle expands our mental horizon, but it also has limits of applicability.

In the study of female masochism, the same principle was used. Manifestations of masochism in women are discovered as a result of observation even where they might otherwise go unnoticed: in the social encounters of women (completely outside the scope of psychoanalytic practice); in the depiction of a female character in literature; when studying women who adhere to some customs alien to us, such as Russian peasant women, who, according to the national proverb, do not feel that their husband loves them if he does not beat them. In the face of such evidence, the psychoanalyst comes to the conclusion that he is faced with a universal phenomenon operating on a psychoanalytic basis with the constancy of the law of nature.

One-sidedness or a positive error in the results is often due to the neglect of cultural and social conditions, in particular, due to the exclusion from the general phenomenology of women living in a different civilization with different traditions.

The Russian patriarchal peasant woman under the tsarist regime is constantly referred to in disputes to prove how deeply masochism has grown into female nature. However, this peasant woman today has turned into an assertive Soviet woman who will undoubtedly be surprised if beatings are talked about as a declaration of love. The change has taken place in the culture, not in the personality of women.

Generally speaking, wherever the question of the frequency of a phenomenon arises, it implies the sociological aspects of the problem. The refusal of psychoanalysts to deal with them does not exclude their existence. The lack of a sociological approach can lead to an incorrect assessment of the significance of anatomical differences and their transformation into the cause of a phenomenon that is actually partly or even completely socially determined.

According to Horney, only the synthesis of both conditions will provide a complete picture of the nature of the phenomenon. The problem of female masochism cannot be attributed only to the peculiarities of the anatomical, psychological and mental characteristics of a woman, but must be considered as largely determined by the culture or social environment in which a particular female masochist developed.

Conclusion

horney psychoanalyst complex female

Karen Horney is an amazing woman. She writes about such details that take place in the soul of a neurotic person, which many simply do not know about. Her books are unique in their accurate depiction of conflicts.

Horney did not agree with almost a single statement of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, regarding women. She completely rejected his view, according to which women unconsciously envy the male penis and reproach their mothers for being deprived of this organ.

She also considered Freud's opinion erroneous, who claimed that a woman unconsciously seeks to give birth to a son and thus symbolically gain a penis. Horney protested against such a humiliating view for women in her reasoning that men experience envy of the uterus, which expresses the unconscious jealousy of men for the ability of women to give birth and feed children.

Finally, Horney concluded that psychoanalysis was created by "a male genius, and almost all who developed the ideas of psychoanalysis were men."

Horney's opposition to Freud's views led to her exclusion from the ranks of psychoanalysts. However, as the first major feminist, she did more than just critique Freud. She put forward her theory of the psychology of women, containing a new look at the differences between men and women in the context of sociocultural influences.

Horney, drawing on the practice of psychological counseling (psychological assistance and psychotherapy), insisted that women often feel inferior compared to men (experiencing stress, neuroses and depression) because their lives are based on economic, political and psychosocial dependence on men. Historically, women have been treated as second-class creatures, not recognized as equal in their rights to those of men, and brought up to recognize male "superiority." Social systems, with their male dominance, constantly force women to feel dependent and incompetent, in need of emotional support, including the help of a psychologist or psychoanalyst consultation. Horney argued that many women strive to become more masculine, but not out of penis envy. She viewed women's "re-evaluation" of masculinity more as a manifestation of a desire for power and privilege.

“The desire to be a man can express the desire to have all those qualities or privileges that our culture considers masculine - such as strength, courage, independence, success, sexual freedom, the right to choose a partner.”

Horney also drew attention to the role contrasts that many women suffer in relationships with men (up to the development of depression or neurosis), highlighting in particular the contrast between the traditional female role of wife and mother and the more liberal role of choosing a career or achieving other goals. . She believed that this role contrast explained the neurotic needs that we can see in women in love relationships with men.

Horney's ideas about culture and gender roles fit well with today's feminist worldview. Horney welcomed the rapid changes in role behavior and relations between the sexes that are observed in modern society. Her numerous articles on the psychology of women are often cited by modern researchers, counseling psychologists, and psychotherapists.

Bibliography

1.Burmenskaya G.V. Karen Horney: the beginning of creativity // Journal of Psychology and Psychoanalysis. - 2008. - No. 6.

2.Voshchinchuk A.N. The ideas of sublimation in the work of K. Horney // Bulletin of the Institute of Modern Knowledge named after A.M. Shirokov. - 2010.

.Deutsch H. Some aspects of female psychology // Journal of Psychology and Psychoanalysis. - 2008. - No. 6.

.Kalina N.F. Fundamentals of psychoanalysis. - M.: Olimp, 1999.

.Leybin V. Psychoanalysis and modern Western philosophy. - M.: 1990.

.Panfilova T.V. Karen Horney and Women's Psychology // Journal of Psychology and Psychoanalysis. - 2008. - No. 6.

.Reshetnikov M. Returning forgotten names. In book. Horney K. Women's psychology. - St. Petersburg: East European Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1993.

8.Modern Western philosophy: dictionary / comp. Malakhov V.S., Filatov V.P. - M.: 1991.

9.Freud Z. Interpretation of dreams. - Minsk: Harvest, 1997.

.Freud Z. Three Essays on Childhood Sexuality. - M.: Olimp, 1998.

.Fromm E. Escape from freedom. - M.: 1990.

.Fromm E. To have or to be? - Kyiv: 1986.

.Horney K. Women's psychology. - Translation from English by E.I. Zamfir. - St. Petersburg: East European Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1993.

.Horney K. Neurosis and personal growth. - Translation from English by E.I. Zamfir. - St. Petersburg: East European Institute of Psychoanalysis, 2003.

.Horney K. Introspection. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2005.

.Horney K. Our internal conflicts. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2005.

.Horney K. Neurotic personality of our time. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2007.

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Karen Horney

Women's psychology

Foreword

Karen Horney (1885-1952) belongs to a galaxy of prominent figures in world psychoanalysis and, along with Helen Deutsch, is the generally recognized founder of the science of female psychology. For obvious reasons, the works of these authors are generally unknown to the domestic reader, including specialists - psychologists and doctors, who, like all of us, until recently lived in a sexless society of "comrades" and "comrades", where of the three main areas of self-realization of the individual (labor, communication and sex), the second was significantly limited by ideology, and the third - as a social and scientific category, was actually prohibited, and therefore - reduced to a primitive physiological act. I will allow myself to suggest that it was the lack of scientifically based views on the gender-role and psychosexual differentiation of personality in early childhood, the desexualization of school and family education and, as a result, the creation of an entire generation of citizens of an indeterminate sex, not least led to the moral degradation of the family and society as a whole, which we are now witnessing. It is hard to believe, but today our Institute is the only one in the entire territory of the former USSR, where a course in female psychology is taught. There is a psychology of the individual (also sexless), crime, trade, political struggle, etc., but there is no female psychology, although, I hope, we still have more women than, for example, criminals and politicians. And only now we are returning to the almost completely forgotten understanding that the world does not consist of classes and estates, not of rich and poor, not of bosses and subordinates, who are always secondary, but of men and women. The merit of the scientific formulation of this problem largely belongs to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and his follower Karen Horney (who did not agree with her teacher in everything). Karen Horney was born in Hamburg to a Protestant family. Her father, Berndt Danielsen, was a captain in the Norwegian Navy and a deeply religious man. Karen's mother, Clotilde Ronzelen, a Danish by birth, on the contrary, was distinguished by free-thinking, which, of course, her daughter inherited. In her youth, Karen accompanied her father on long sea voyages, where she acquired a passion for travel and distant lands. Her decision to pursue medicine - not an ordinary choice for a woman of the early twentieth century - was made under the influence of her mother. After graduating from the University of Berlin (1913) as the best student in the group, Horney specialized in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. At twenty-four, she married the Berlin lawyer Oscar Horney. After living with her husband for twenty-eight years and raising three daughters, in 1937, due to differences in interests, Karen divorced her husband, and from that time she devoted herself entirely to the psychoanalytic movement. An undeniably talented physician and researcher, Horney became a doctor of medicine at twenty-eight, and by thirty she was already one of the recognized teachers of the newly opened Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis. Already one of her first articles "On the origin of the castration complex in women" brought her European fame. K. Horney went through personal analysis with Hans Sachs, one of the closest associates of 3. Freud and the founder of the first Psychoanalytic Committee (1913), and she received the qualification of a teaching analyst from Karl Abraham, whom 3. Freud considered his most capable student. Learning from such faithful followers of Freud, it would seem, should have contributed to an unconditional adherence to the ideas of classical psychoanalysis. However, Horney, almost from her first works, begins to actively polemize with the creator of psychoanalytic theory, and one cannot but admit that in a number of cases this polemic was quite productive. The reason for this unexpected “confrontation” is most clearly revealed by Horney herself. In 1926, in The Departure from Femininity, she wrote: “Psychoanalysis is the work of a male genius, and almost all who developed its ideas were also men. It is natural and natural that they were focused on studying the essence of male psychology and understood more in the development of a man than a woman. It is difficult to disagree with this reproach, as well as with the fact that only a differentiated approach to male and female psychology opens the way to the development of a philosophy of a holistic personality. Holism or "philosophy of integrity", where the objective and the subjective, the material and the ideal are combined, formed the basis of all Horney's conceptual approaches. A significant role in the life of Karen Horney was played by Franz Alexander, who, having declared his departure from psychoanalysis and leaving Berlin because of this, in fact skillfully implied analytical approaches to American social psychology. In many ways, K. Horney went to the creation of the science of female psychology in a similar way. It was F. Alexander who, in 1932, invited Karen Horney to Chicago as deputy director of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. It was already the second psychoanalytic institute in the USA. The first was opened in 1930 in New York. Dr. Sandor Rado (1890-1972) was invited from Berlin to lead it, bringing with him the spirit of orthodoxy and tradition that existed at the Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis. F. Alexander adhered to broader views and in many ways contributed to overcoming the isolation of psychoanalysis and its arrival in universities and colleges in the United States. After working together for about two years, Alexander and Horney recognized that their further collaboration was impossible, since each had his own path. K. Horney leaves for New York, where in 1941 he organized the American Institute of Psychoanalysis, and later became the founding editor of the American Psychoanalytic Journal. She owns dozens of studies, articles and books, among which the most famous are "The Neurotic Personality of Our Time" and "Female Psychology", which will make up the first two books of the series "Psychoanalytic Literature Library" published by us. I have already mentioned the reason for such a long journey to the Russian reader, but here I consider it appropriate to note that the Russian Psychoanalytic Institute was created twenty years earlier than the American one, but by the time these books appeared, both the Institute and the publication of the Psychological and Psychoanalytic libraries under the editorship of the director of the Institute, Professor I. D. Ermakov, were already liquidated, of course, as a "stronghold of bourgeois ideology", and many outstanding scientists-analysts who received world recognition were repressed, including physically destroyed. In 1942, Professor Ivan Dmitrievich Ermakov also died in the Butyrka prison, undoubtedly a talented clinician, scientist and organizer, whose merits to Russian science and culture have not yet been duly appreciated. The reopening of our Institute, the resumption of the systematic training of analysts, research and publishing activities became possible only in 1991. I will not follow a fairly common tradition and retell the content of specific chapters in the introduction, and even more so, give an assessment of them, leaving this to the reader. Although, I must admit, I do not agree with the author in everything. But I think it would be dishonest to enter into polemics with him: the book was written too long ago, and too much has changed during this time both in ourselves, and in culture, and in psychoanalysis. At first, I made quite a lot of footnotes, but then, realizing that it was impossible to put all the foundations of psychoanalytic knowledge into notes, I abandoned unnecessary comments, focusing solely on trying to preserve the originality of the author's language and searching for adequate Russian equivalents. Here, after completing work on the Russian text of the book, I would like to make only one more, but, as it seems to me, extremely important note. When starting to read the book, one must constantly remember that, just like Freud, when presenting psychopathological complexes, describing states and drives that do not yet have definite language equivalents, the author quite often resorts to metaphor. I will now try again to explain and illustrate this. When you say to your interlocutor: “And then I just exploded,” it would not occur to any normal person to identify what was said with a real physical process. In the same way, psychoanalytic terms in the vast majority of cases cannot be directly correlated with the ordinary meanings of the words or combinations that form them, but only generally and conventionally characterize those “somatic experiences”, the mental equivalents of which are extremely diverse. The perception of the Oedipus complex only as an incestuous desire is the lot of wild psychoanalysis and unfortunate analysts. And here I would like to emphasize once again that the half-understood ideas of psychoanalysis are much more dangerous than complete misunderstanding. A lot of people were involved in the work on this book - artists, proofreaders, editors, typesetters and printers, each of whom deserves gratitude. But I would like to express my special gratitude to the translator, a student of our Institute, Elena Ivanovna Zamfir, who not only took on the task of preparing the Russian version of the book (initially, as a term paper), but also really contributed to its publication, showing sincere interest, perseverance and enviable patience in contacts with scientific editors. I also hope that the publication of this book will give an additional impetus not only to new approaches to the treatment of functional disorders, but will actually contribute to the formation of a new self-awareness of the modern Russian woman. This book, called by the author "Women's Psychology", of course, is about men too. And I am sure that reading it will not go unnoticed by both sexes, and, therefore, will allow them to better understand each other, or rather, take at least another half step towards the unattainable ideal of mutual understanding. Professor M. Reshetnikov

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) - an outstanding German philosopher and scientist.

Kant's philosophy is revealed mainly in his two main works: the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he came to the conclusion that the human mind, in principle, cannot cognize the essence of things. Only the knowledge of "phenomena" is possible, i.e. what arises as a result of the interaction of the real world (the so-called "things in themselves", inaccessible to knowledge) and our cognitive ability. Since "things in themselves" are unknowable, Kant concludes that it is fundamentally impossible to comprehend God, the soul, the world. He criticizes the so-called. evidence of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.

However, proceeding from the existence of a moral law in us, which certainly requires its fulfillment, Kant, in his Critique of Practical Reason, asserts the necessity of postulating the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. Since, only by accepting the existence of God, who is willing and able to observe goodness and truth, and the immortality of the soul, allowing it to perfect itself indefinitely, it is possible to achieve that highest moral ideal, the desire for which is inherent in human nature.

Kant expresses his view on the essence of religion in these works, as well as in the essay “Religion within the limits of reason alone”. According to Kant, the content of religious consciousness is the concept of God as a moral legislator, and religion consists in the recognition by a person of all his moral duties as the commandments of God. In the Critique of Practical Reason, he writes: “The moral law, through the concept of the highest good, as the object and ultimate goal of pure practical reason, leads a person to religion, i.e. recognition of all their duties as God's commandments - not as sanctions, i.e. arbitrary and in themselves accidental determinations of someone else's will, but as the essential laws of any free will in itself. “Religion, in matter or in object, is no different from morality, because the common subject of both is moral duties; The difference between religion and morality is only formal.

The essence of religion, therefore, according to Kant, is the fulfillment of a moral duty, "as the commandments of God." Kant, in explaining his understanding of religion, says that a reasonable person can have a religion, but he should not have any relationship with God, because nothing reliable is known to a person about His actual existence. In place of God in religion, he puts man with his inherent moral law. As a result, a kind of such a universal concept of religion is created, in which it can exist without recognizing the existence of God. It is no coincidence that in his last great work, Opus postumum, he repeatedly wrote: "I am God."

Kant's point of view on religion as a set of certain moral obligations is widespread. Its main idea boils down to the assertion that it is enough for a person to be good, for this is the essence of religion. And religiosity is a secondary and optional matter. Therefore, all specifically religious requirements for a person: faith, dogmas, commandments, divine services and prayers, norms of church life are superfluous. All this is superstition or philosophy and can be ignored. This is where the so-called preaching comes from. universal morality, adogmatic Christianity, unity in essence of all religions, etc.

Very well the lack of spirituality and, in essence, the atheism of Kant's view of religion is shown by the priest. Pavel Florensky. Analyzing the concept of holiness, he writes: “Our modern thought tends to equate this reality [of the other world] with moral strength, understanding holiness as the fullness of moral perfections. Such is Kant's circumvention of the cult from the rear... But impotent attacks on the concept of holiness are in vain... The very usage of words testifies against such attempts: when one speaks of holy garments, holy utensils, holy water, holy oil, holy temple, and so on. further, and so on, it is clear that here we are talking about not ethical, but ontological perfection ... And if we call a person a saint, then by this we do not indicate his morality - there are corresponding words for such an indication - but ... transcendentity, its presence in areas inaccessible to ordinary understanding... So, therefore, if it is said about a moral deed: “a holy deed”, then here we mean not its Kantian, immanent to the world, moral orientation, but anti-Kantian, transcendent co-existence with non-worldly energies to the world. Calling God Holy, and Holy par excellence, the source of all holiness and the fullness of holiness... we sing not of His moral, but of His Divine nature...”

The substitution of holiness for morality and spirituality for morality is a profound mistake of Kant and all "Kantians". The fulfillment of moral duties without God is tantamount to sailing a ship "without a rudder and without sails."

I. Horney and female psychology

While still teaching orthodox theory at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, Horney began to diverge from Freud on issues of penis envy, female masochism, and female development, and attempted to replace the dominant phallocentric view of female psychology with a different, female view. Initially, she tried to change psychoanalysis from the inside, but eventually she moved away from many of its prejudices and created her own theory.

In her first two articles, "On the Origin of the Castration Complex in Women" (1923) and "The Departure from Femininity" (1926), Horney sought to show that the girl and woman possessed only her own biological constitution and developmental patterns, which should be considered on the basis of female beginning, and not as different from men, and not as products of their supposed inferiority to men. She challenged the psychoanalytic approach to a woman as an inferior man, considering this approach a consequence of the sex of its creator, a man of genius, and the fruit of a culture in which the masculine principle prevailed. The prevailing male views on a woman were assimilated by psychoanalysis as a scientific picture of the essence of a woman. For Horney, it is important to understand why a man sees a woman in this way. She argues that a man's envy of pregnancy, childbearing, motherhood, the female breast and the opportunity to feed on it gives rise to an unconscious tendency to devalue all this, and that the male creative impulse serves to overcompensate for his insignificant role in the process of reproduction. "Envy of the womb" in a man is undoubtedly stronger than "envy of the penis" in a woman, since a man wants to belittle the importance of a woman much more than a woman wants to belittle the importance of a man.

In later articles, Horney continued her analysis of the male view of woman in order to show the lack of scientific content. In the article "Mistrust Between the Sexes" (1931), she argues that a woman is seen as a "second-class creature", since "at all times the more powerful party created the ideology necessary to ensure its dominant position", and "in this ideology, the differences of the weak were interpreted as second rate". In Fear of Woman (1932), Horney traces this male fear back to the boy's fear that his genitals are inadequate to his mother's. A woman threatens a man not with castration, but with humiliation, threatening "masculine self-respect." Growing up, a man continues to worry deep down about the size of his penis and about his potency. This anxiety is not duplicated by any female anxiety: "a woman plays her role by the very fact of her being", she does not need to constantly prove her feminine essence. Therefore, a woman does not have a narcissistic fear of a man. To cope with his anxiety, a man puts forward the ideal of productivity, seeks sexual "victories" or seeks to humiliate the object of love.

Horney does not deny that women are often jealous of men and dissatisfied with their female role. Many of her works are devoted to the "masculinity complex", which she defines in "Forbidden Femininity" (1926) as "a complex of feelings and fantasies of a woman, the content of which is determined by the unconscious desire for the advantages that the position of a man gives, envy of men, desire to be a man and refusal to from the role of a woman. Initially, she believed that a woman's masculinity complex was inevitable, since it was necessary in order to avoid the feelings of guilt and anxiety that are the product of the Oedipal situation, but she subsequently revised her opinion. The masculinity complex is a product of cultural male dominance and the characteristics of a girl's family dynamics, Horney argued.

“In real life, a girl is doomed from birth to be convinced of her inferiority, whether it is expressed rudely or subtly. This situation constantly stimulates her masculinity complex” (“Escape from Femininity”).

Speaking of family dynamics, Horney at first considered the relationship of the girl with the men of the family to be the most important, but later the mother becomes the central figure in the case histories of women who suffered from a masculinity complex. In Maternal Conflicts (1933) she enumerates all those traits of the girl's childhood which she considers responsible for the masculinity complex.

“Typically, girls tend to have very early reasons to dislike their own female world. The reasons for this could be maternal intimidation, deep disappointment in relationships associated with a father or brother, early sexual experience that horrified the girl, favoritism of parents for relation to my brother."

All this was in the childhood of Karen Horney herself.

In her work on female psychology, Horney gradually moved away from Freud's belief that "anatomy is destiny" and increasingly singled out cultural factors as a source of women's problems and gender-role identification problems. No, a woman does not envy a male penis, but a man's privileges. She really needs to have not a penis, but the opportunity to fulfill herself, developing the human abilities inherent in her. The patriarchal ideal of a woman does not always meet her inner needs, although the power of this ideal often forces a woman to behave in accordance with it. In "The Problem of Female Masochism," Horney challenges the theory of "the ancestral kinship between masochism and the female organism." This belief of some psychoanalysts merely reflects the stereotypes of a masculine culture, while Horney traces a number of social conditions that make a woman more masochistic than a man. Moreover, a comparison of different cultures shows that these conditions are not universal: some cultures are more unfavorable for a woman's development than others.

Although Horney devoted most of her professional life to the problems of female psychology, she left this topic in 1935, believing that the role of culture in shaping the psyche of a woman is too great for us to make a clear distinction: this is female, and this is not. In a lecture entitled "Woman's Fear of Action" (1935), Horney argues that we will only be able to understand what the psychological difference between woman and man really is when a woman is freed from the concept of femininity imposed by masculine culture. Our goal should not be to define the true essence of femininity, but to encourage "the full and all-round development of the personality of each person." After that, she began to develop her theory, which she considered to be gender neutral, applicable to both men and women.

Karen Horney disagreed with many of the statements of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, regarding women.

She completely rejected his view, according to which women unconsciously envy the male penis and reproach their mothers for being deprived of this organ.

She also considered Freud's opinion erroneous, who claimed that a woman unconsciously seeks to give birth to a son and thus symbolically gain a penis.

Horney explained the fallacy of such statements by the fact that psychoanalysis was created by "a male genius, and almost all who developed the ideas of psychoanalysis were men."

The result of disagreement with the official theory is Horney's disqualification as a personal psychoanalyst and exclusion from the ranks of psychoanalysis.

However, Horney achieved more than just a critique of Freud. She created her theory of the psychology of women, containing a new look at the differences between men and women in the context of sociocultural influences.

Horney, drawing on her clinical practice, argued that women often feel inferior to men because their lives are based on economic, political, and psychosocial dependence on men.

In the "men's world" in which we live, women were treated (often still treated) as second-class creatures, not recognizing the equality of their rights with the rights of men and brought up to accept male "superiority".

Male-dominated social systems constantly make women feel dependent and inadequate.

Horney argued that many women strive to become more masculine, but not out of penis envy. She saw women's "overvaluation" of masculinity more as a manifestation of a desire for power and privilege: "The desire to be a man can express a desire to have all those qualities or privileges that our culture considers masculine - such as strength, courage, independence, success, sexual freedom the right to choose a partner.

Horney also drew attention to the role contrasts that many women suffer in relationships with men (up to the development of depression or neurosis), highlighting in particular the contrast between the traditional female role of wife and mother and the more liberal role of choosing a career or achieving other goals. . She believed that this role contrast explained the neurotic needs that we can see in women in love relationships with men.

Relation to the castration complex

Karen Horney's views on the psychology of a woman have undergone significant changes in the course of her work, ranging from full support for the theory of psychoanalysis by Z. Freud to its deep rethinking and processing.

Thus, in the Report at the VII International Psychoanalytic Congress in Berlin in September 1922 “On the origin of the castration complex in women,” Horney demonstrates his complete adherence to the views of orthodox psychoanalysis on the problem of castration: “... our understanding of the nature of this phenomenon has not changed significantly. Many women, both in childhood and in adulthood, periodically or even constantly experience suffering associated with their gender. The specific manifestations of the mentality of women, arising from the protest against the fate of being a woman, originate from their childhood longing for their own penis. The unacceptable idea of ​​one's original deprivation in this respect gives rise to passive fantasies of castration, while active fantasies are generated by a vindictive attitude towards a man who is in a privileged position.

But already in this report, there is a theme of doubt, even some kind of disagreement with the official point of view on the problem: “... it is accepted as an axiom that women feel flawed precisely because of their genitals. Perhaps, from the point of view of male narcissism, everything here seems too obvious ... Nevertheless, the overly bold assertion that half of humanity is dissatisfied with their gender and can overcome this discontent only in especially favorable conditions seems completely unsatisfactory, and not only from the point of view of the female narcissism, but also biological science."

Horney asks the question, the search for an answer to which throughout her life led her to create a psychology of women different from the psychology of men: is it really a castration complex found in women, which can lead not only to the development of neurosis, but is a threat to healthy character formation or even the entire future fate of women (quite normal, capable of any practical activity), is based solely on the unsatisfied desire to have a penis? Or is this just a pretext behind which other forces are hidden, the dynamic beginning of which is familiar from the mechanism of the formation of neuroses?

Horney does not just ask this question, although the very posing of such a question is dangerous for orthodox psychoanalysis. Horney offers to answer this question, and offers several methodological approaches, one of which (ontological), in her opinion, is clinical practice.

So, examining the often occurring desire of his patients to urinate like a man, Horney sees the reason for such a desire not in the castration complex, but in the feeling of injustice that is born from gender inequality in society: “... it is especially difficult for girls to overcome the desire to masturbate, as they feel that, because of their difference in body build, they are unfairly prohibited from doing what boys are allowed to do.... the difference in body build can easily lead to a bitter sense of injustice, and thus the argument later used to justify the rejection of femininity (namely, that that men enjoy greater sexual freedom) appears to be conditioned by genuine early childhood experiences.

Thus, Horney says that in a society where some features of an individual (anatomical structure, defects in anatomy or physiology, specific behavior, etc.) can become the basis for socio-cultural prohibitions, these very features can serve as the basis for the formation personality structures. With the removal of these prohibitions, the personality structure can be formed in a different way.

To paraphrase the words of Karen Horney herself (of "American Indian girls and little Trobriand girls"), one might wonder if there is a desire to urinate like a man in little girls, for example, Mongolians, whose cultural customs and peculiarities in clothing allowed them (in Karen's time) Horney, anyway) to send their natural needs as openly (and also directly) as to men?

Thus, already at the beginning of his psychoanalytic career, Horney begins to doubt the correctness of the applicability of psychoanalytic maxims to women without taking into account the peculiarities of female psychology.

In the future, her conviction that it is impossible to approach the assessment of the characteristics of the psychology of a woman from the point of view of male psychological teaching.

Being already a mature psychologist, Horney formulates the main prerequisites for the further development of the psychology of a woman by her followers (by the way, not only female psychologists, but also men):

1. The situation of the "oedipal complex" takes place, but as a special case. The relationship of the sexes is a field of many general, special and individual problems that cannot be reduced to any one formula.

In the days of matriarchy, law and custom were centered around the mother and the "matricides" were then (as Sophocles and other ancient authors testify) a more serious crime than parricide. In the era of the invention of writing, a man began to play a leading role in politics, economics, legislation and sexual morality. There were many reasons for this. One of them, probably, is that a man is more rational, more capable of depersonalizing himself, "socializing his psyche." But this is also his weakness, his inconsistency with modernity, which again emphasizes the importance of a holistic, individualized personality. The woman again enters the struggle for equality.

2. A man honors a woman like a Mother who feeds, cares, sacrifices herself. The life-giving power of a woman fills men with admiration. But "it is disgusting for a human being to feel admiration and not hold a grudge against one whose abilities one does not possess." A man envies a woman and seeks to compensate for his inability to bear children by creating a state, religion, art. Therefore, the whole culture bears the imprint of masculinity.

By opposing gender equality, “male culture” infringes on women in many ways. Motherhood is poorly protected by law. Pregnancy and child rearing, which require huge physical and mental costs from a woman, and are the main reason for the “cultural lag” of a woman, are almost not compensated in any way. There is an indulgence of the sexual irresponsibility of men and the relegation of a woman to the role of a sexual object.

3. Another reason for distrust and even hostility between the sexes is that a man is afraid of a woman as a sexual being. In many African tribes, men believe that women have magical powers over their genitals. A man is also inclined to think that a woman takes away his strength during sexual intercourse, takes his life-giving seed for herself. The attitude towards a woman is associated with the fear of death: whoever gives life has the right to take it away.

This mystical fear was confirmed by the unprecedented destruction of women under the banner of the fight against witches (“Hammer of the Witches”), whose only fault was that the men themselves lusted for women and could not resist this lust (“Notre Dame Cathedral” by V. Hugo ).

4. A man is more dependent on a woman than she is on him. He is afraid not to satisfy the woman, to be impotent, to humiliate himself in front of her. The sexuality of a woman scares him more than attracts him. He would rather have the woman just be a sexual object. For a long time, any sexual activity on the part of a woman was considered a deviation, and frigidity was considered the norm. For the unhindered satisfaction of his sexual desires, a man must keep a woman in a state of obedience, in other words, in slavery, which is what takes place in everyday life and the public economy.

In the mythological fantasy, a man would like to see a woman "immaculate", devoid of sexual desires, only in this case she is completely safe for him. Apparently, the cult of the Virgin Mary is connected with this. The debasement of the feminine principle is also evident in the story of Adam and Eve. For some reason, Eve was made from Adam's rib, and not Adam comes from Eve's body. A woman in the Old Testament is interpreted as a temptress and seducer.

5. Distrust and hostility towards a man are also present in the female psyche, but they are usually associated with childhood experiences. The "Paradise of Childhood" that forgetful adults often talk about is nothing more than an illusion. A girl is more disadvantaged in her childhood than a boy. More is forbidden, less is allowed. She develops a sense of guilt and fear of physical force in childhood. This is eloquently evidenced by the dreams of girls, in which female fear arises when meeting with snakes, wild animals, monsters that can defeat her, take possession of her, break into her body. The girl intuitively feels that her future does not depend on her, but on someone else, on a mysterious event that she is waiting for and afraid of. Trying to avoid these experiences, the girl goes into the "male role". This is especially noticeable between the ages of four and ten. During puberty, noisy boyish behavior disappears, giving way to girlish - belittled and appropriate social role, which is often considered dangerous and undesirable.

Thus, Horney convincingly argues that the price of accepting a female role is a greater propensity for neuroticism than that of men. Sometimes - ambition, the desire for power, the desire to "take the whole man." Sometimes - emphasized modesty, passivity - as if they just didn’t think that she wants something from a man. Finally, frigidity common among women.