Karen Horney

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Horney also had ideas about feminine psychology and the application of psychotherapy. As for feminine psychology, Karen implemented her ideas of marriage and spouse selection based on parental mirroring. Horney gave an address expressing this ideal and did so in a Freudian perspective. The major point of her address was to state that because males symbolically marry their mothers and females symbolically marry their fathers, the Oedipus complex necessarily manifests itself with marriage (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2011, p 139). This is better explained in the terms of as a child, they will inhibit desires for their parents, and therefore this same desires will manifest themselves in aspects of marriage. She referred to this as the incest prohibition and also saw its prominence in the aspect of parent-child relationships (Gudan, 2008). To better explain this ideal I will use an example as such. Tom is looking for a wife and has always favored his mother since childhood as being the ideal epitome of a wife and mother. Because of this, Tom decides to marry a young lady that reflects his mother. Because the sexual relationship with his wife is symbolically the same as the relationship as his mother, then Karen would say that the sexual aspect of the marriage would soon lessen. This could be taken in vice versa if a female were to…show more content…
Her theories were meant to apply equally to males and females. Marcia Westkott argues, to the contrary, that Horney's later work continues to have special relevance for women. Meaning that it was more specified for the unity of women on the subject basis of equality and her work was strictly based to women. This can be seen as form of critique because to propose a theory that is supposed to describe the neurotic possibilities of both genders, she later seems to be more gender specified towards
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