Grâce à Revolution in mind, la très recommandable histoire de la psychanalyse écrite par George Makari, je découvre l’existence de Karen Horney, une psychanalyste allemande (« arguably the first great female psychoanalytic theoretician ») qui a semble-t-il inauguré la critique féministe des théories freudiennes, en particulier de la fameuse (et fumeuse) « envie du pénis ».
« In this formulation we have it assumed as an axiomatic fact that females feel at a disadvantage in this respect of their genital organs, without being regarded as constituting a problem in itself—possibly because to masculine narcissism this has seemed too self-evident to need explanation. Nevertheless, the conclusion so far drawn from the investigations—amounting as it does to an assertion that one-half of the human race is discontented with the sex assigned to it and can overcome this discontent only in favorable circumstances—is decidedly unsatisfying, not only to feminine narcissism but also to biological science. »
Karen Horney, On the Genesis of the Castration Complex in Women
J’aime particulièrement ce passage qui se situe à al fin des quelques pages que George Makari consacre à Karen Horney :
« She openly stated that the entire edifice of psychoanalytic theory had tended to neglect female psychology, since its theoreticians were male. Horney bluntly compared the fantasies of little boys about girls with psychoanalytic theories of feminine development and concluded there was little difference. »
George Makari, Revolution in Mind, HarperCollins, p.381