Wonder Woman of the Week: Karen Horney

This week's Wonder Woman was an early psychologist who challenged some of the fallacies of Freudian psychology far before the philosophy became its own sphere of study. Karen Horney rebutted several Freudian ideas that seperated the psyches of men and women to establish a more accurate understanding of human psychology that researchers continue to follow in the 21st Century. During Karen Horney's time as a psychologist, there were few women in the field, meaning several psychologists- including Wonder Woman's creator- had biases towards misogynistic points-of-view.

Karen Horney and her contemporaries (often referred to as Neo Freudians) challenged the concepts of gender differences in psychology as environmental rather than biological. This destroyed Freud's idea of penis envy as a cause for psychological disorders affecting women. Horney developed new theories after extensive research on neurosis and narcissism to establish a model for the foundation of personalities which psychologists over a century later continue to cite.