Karen Horney  

"The genital zone becomes more important as the child gets involved in the so-called Oedipus complex. He wants sexual union with the parent of the opposite sex and is jealous and harbors death wishes toward the parent of the same sex. The Oedipus complex is not thought of merely as a product of a certain life situation of the child but as a biological necessity, a phase to which the human being is predestined by nature. The Oedipus complex in the boy involves the castration complex, that is, the fear of retaliation by punishment on the offending organ and the wish to protect oneself by passivity. Freudian analysis considers the Oedipus complex to be the nucleus of every neurosis. The little girl goes through a similar development with the difference that, not having a penis, she has to compensate for this defect by phantasying that originally she did have one, but that it was cut off as punishment for her sexual desires. It was cut off by her natural rival, the mother. She harbors an intense conscious or unconscious envy of a penis. Feminine psychology, according to Freud, inevitably bears the mark of what he termed "penis envy"."