Distrust Between Sexes
A woman gets pregnant, and her boyfriend leaves her. In Karen Horney`s
The
Distrust Between the Sexes, she explains how a person`s psychological
history
causes him/her to distrust people of the opposite sex because of
certain
expectations they might have. Longings for happiness, childhood
reflections, and
childhood conflicts are all things that invent these
expectations. First off,
people are longing for happiness, while setting
their expectations at high.
Horney states, All of our unconscious wishes,
contradictory in their nature and
expanding boundlessly on all sides, are
waiting here for their fulfillment
(341). Children are raised to believe that
relationships with the opposite sex
are their doorway to happiness. Horney
says, The partner is supposed to be
strong, and at the same time helpless, to
dominate us and be dominated by us, to
be ascetic and to be sensuous (341).
People expect their partners to be too many
things, which will lead them to
disappointment. Horney states, We take the
magnitude of such overvaluation
for the measure of our love, while in reality it
merely expresses the
magnitude of our expectations (341). Society`s longing for
happiness has so
many expectations of what love should be that, in the end, all
one has is
one`s expectations. Next, childhood reflections cause a certain
number of
expectations that are handed down by generations. Horney states, Thus
far,
our reflections certainly have been neither new nor specifically
analytical
and have often been better formulated in the past (341).
Reflections that people
have from their childhood carve the person into what
they are as an adult.
Horney explains, The paradise of childhood is most
often an illusion with which
adults like to deceive themselves(341). Adults
remember their childhood as a
fantasy and try to live their lives around that
fantasy. Horney says, We need
only recall the capacity that children posses
even in their very early years,
for passionate and instinctive sexual desires
similar to those of adults and yet
different from them (342). Children and
adults are very different, but if a
person finds the similarity, it will help
them throughout their lives. Last,
childhood conflicts give a person certain
expectations of how the opposite sex
will treat a person. Horney states, Let
us further assume that the latter wish
was repressed due to anxiety from a
guilty conscience; then we have here the
fundamental constellation for the
formation of certain type of woman who is
unable to relate to the male
because she fears that every male will suspect her
of wanting something from
him (343). Children have many conflicts, which affect
part of their adult
lives. Horney explains, Or by completely projecting onto him
her repressed
wishes, she will imagine that every male merely intends to exploit
her, that
he wants from her only sexual satisfaction, after which he will
discard her
(343). If a person`s opposite sex hurts them in any way, then that
person
will believe that the opposite sex will always hurt them. Horney states,
(Or
let us assume that a reaction formation of excessive modesty will mask
the
repressed drive for power (343). Children develop at different
ages;
therefore, modesty levels are different for the opposite sex. Distrust
between
the opposite sexes is the effect from psychological history because
of certain
standards and expectations people set for themselves and others.
Expectations
that contribute to the distrust between the sexes are caused by
longings for
happiness, childhood reflections, and childhood conflicts.