Envy: How to Interpret a Mortal Sin?

Envy has always been a frequent topic in religious scriptures and literature. Freud formulated penis envy as a central element in female psychology. Nowadays this theory has been largely abandoned. Envy, however, continues to keep its position as a central psychoanalytic concept in the form of oral envy. Melanie Klein conceptualized it as a direct derivative of the death instinct. This paper starts with demonstrating examples of envy in literature. The author continues with searching his own life for traces of envy. He then draws on his own clinical practice and on case studies of other analysts. He concludes that a theory, describing envy as directly deriving from the death drive does not do justice to the multiple aspects of the complex emotional state of envy. Anne-Marie and Joseph Sandler’s work on the present and past unconscious as well as Mark Solms’ neuropsychoanalytic research on the unconscious and the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis corroborate this conclusion.

GENDER BIAS CONSTRUCTED IN FREUD’S CONCEPT ON HUMAN PSYCHO-SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT (An Analyctical Study based on Islamic Psychological Analysis)

<p><span>Ilmu pengetahuan adalah hasil konstruksi manusia yang sangat bergantung pada siapa yang menciptanya. Ia bukanlah tidak berjenis kelamin. Ia melayani dan menguatkan nilai-nilai sosial dan konsep-konsep yang dibuat oleh penciptanya sendiri. Ketika ia tergenggam erat di tangan laki-laki, maka bias dipastikan pengalaman perempuan tidak akan menjadi sumber pengetahuan. Perempuan hanya akan menjadi objek telaah penelitian, termasuk dalam konteks ini, ilmu Psikologi. Penelitian ini akan menelaah secara kritis konsep Penis Envy Sigmund Freud yang ditenggarai memiliki pola pandang yang miring dalam melihat keberadaan organ seksualitas perempuan, disamping menunjukan posisi perempuan sebagai the second sex (makhluk kedua) dalam pranata sosial masyarakat. Penelitian ini menggunakan metodologi kualitatif dengan pendekatan literatur. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa ada beberapa bias gender yang dibangun dalam konsep Freud tentang Perkembangan Psiko-Seksual manusia seperti (1) Anatomi adalah takdir; (2) Superego laki-laki berkembang lebih baik daripada perempuan; (3) Perempuan lebih mudah menjadi neurotik daripada laki-laki; (4) beberapa strereotip perempuan sebagai efek residu dari Kecemburuan pada Penis; dan (5) teori Oedipus dan Electra Complex. </span><span lang="EN-US">Penelitian ini penting </span><span>untuk mengatasi mengatasi persoalan androsentrisme dan representasi perempuan dalam ilmu Psikologi, mengakui perbedaan cara berpikir dan berpengetahuan perempuan dan laki-laki, dan mempertimbangkan pengalaman hidup</span><span lang="EN-US"> mereka</span><span> melalui perspektif Psikologi Islam. </span></p>

Problems in Freud’s Psychology of Women

Freud’s ideas on the development and psychological characteristics of girls and women, though laden with rich clinical and theoretical discoveries and achievements, appear to have been significantly flawed by the influence of traditional patriarchal and evolutionary values. This influence is evident in certain questionable presuppositions, logical errors and inconsistencies, suspensions of intensive inquiry, underemphasis on certain developmental variables, and confusions between observations, definitions, and value preferences. Under three headings—The Problem of Women’s Morality and Objectivity, The Problem of Neglected Prephallic Development, and The Problem of Naming—I discuss Freud’s generalizations concerning ego and superego development in boys and girls, penis envy, biologically predestined procreativity, the role of the mother, the fateful linkages male-masculine-active-aggressive-dominant and female-feminine-passive-masochistic-submissive, and other topics as well. In general, it is argued that Freud’s generalizations concerning girls and women do injustice to both his psychoanalytic method and his clinical findings.

Person of the Month: Karen Horney (1885-1952)

Karen Horney (nee Danielson) was born near Hamburg, Germany on September 16, 1885. Her father was a religious, authoritarian ship’s captain, while her mother was a well-educated, more liberal intellectual who encouraged Danielson in her studies. Her father was a widower with four teenage children. Danielson was the second child from his new marriage, the first being a favoured older brother. Unflattering comments by her father relating to both her looks and her intelligence led Danielson to decide, at the age of nine, that if she couldn’t be pretty, then she would be smart. At age nine she also battled depression for the first time and would continue the battle throughout her life. At 13, Danielson decided she wanted to become a doctor – a lofty and perhaps not very realistic goal for a young woman in the late 19th century. Without her parents’ support, Danielson nonetheless entered medical school in 1906 as one of the first women to enter a German university. While there, she met economics major and aspiring law student, Oskar Horney, and the two married in 1909. It was not a particularly happy marriage although it did result in three daughters born between 1910 and 1916. Within the space of one year, Horney gave birth to her first daughter and lost both of her parents. She sought psychoanalysis to help her cope. Her analyst was Freud disciple Karl Abraham, who became her mentor at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society where she became an analyst in private practice in addition to her hospital work. She helped design and eventually directed the Society’s training program, taught students, and conducted psychoanalytic research. Her roles as woman doctor, wife, and mother inspired her research on female sexual development, writing about the castration complex in women in 1924 and asserting – contrary to Freud – which the true source of penis envy was in the way female children were treated by their parents.