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mediately was attacked by the Hungarians Franz Alexander and
Sandor Rado , and defended by Abraham and Horney.
Horney, however, had her Own quarrels with Abraham: he
held that the pre-Oedipal girl, when realizing that she will never
have a penis but will be able to have a child, starts to envy her
mother and to wish for a child by her father. Instead , postulated
Horney, the Oedipal girl identifies with her mother and then is
pushed back into the pre-Oedipal phase by her father's inevitable re–
jection . This experience colors all future relationships with men: she
reacts with "masculine" revenge and disappointment rather than
with "feminine" passivity and submission . For Klein , however, the
girl's defense against her own feminine tendencies is a result of the
fear and resentment she feels toward her mother for having thwarted
her true feminine needs, at the same time that she is "shuddering
from congress with her father" (Grosskurth). Mother-daughter rela–
tions thus became the core of Klein's theory, as she pushed the roots
of unconscious theory further back to the earliest experiences, in–
cluding intrauterine ones. Horney, on the other hand , drew closer to
the Freudo-Marxists and came to believe that social change even–
tually would allow for new female roles.
Essentially, Horney held that the formulations of female
psychology originated in the male child's narcissistic response to the
female body , to the "castration" and humiliation he fears, and that
beneath the narcissistic glorification of the penis lurks the dread of
the vagina. Somewhat later, she equated "penis envy" in girls with
"womb envy" in boys, and then, to distinguish between female sex–
uality and "primary phallic sexuality," introduced the wish for
children. But, when Horney recognized that this explanation did not
serve the liberation of women in society , she moved on to reject her
instinct theory .
Westkott , for the most part, bypasses Horney's biography and
pursues her contributions to feminism alone. Still, she demonstrates
how Horney's own experiences exemplified her theories : her father
did not appreciate her intelligence and nearly kept her from attend–
ing the Gymnasium; she was expected to nurture her mother, "poor
little Mutti ," to defend her against her father's criticisms-while
allowing herself to be mercilessly teased by him. Reading both
Freud and Horney selectively, Westkott supports her thesis with
feminist ones by Jane Gallop
(The Daughter
oj
Seduction : Feminism and
Psychoanalysis ,
1982) , by J . Van Herick
(Freud, Femininity and Faith,
