German-born psychoanalyst Karen Horney was the first who dared take issue with Freud’s ideas about female sexuality—in particular his theory of penis envy. She argued that women’s envy of men resulted from their inferior status in a male-dominated world, rather than their physiology. There are reasons, she insisted, for men to envy women, who have the ability to bear children. One of the first female medical students in Germany, and one of the first doctors in Berlin to undergo psychoanalytic training, Horney became a charismatic and controversial figure in American psychoanalysis when she settled in New York in the 1930’s.

After she was expelled from the dominant psychoanalytic institute in New York, she founded her own. She was a popular lecturer and prolific author, whose books anticipated both modern feminism and current interest in the narcissistic personality.