Female Relationality & the Idealized Self

For nearly two decades writers on the psychology of women have questioned what they have taken to be the male bias in traditional definitions of psychological health and development. In 1970 Broverman et al. charted the terms of what was to become the new feminist critique: their findings showed that clinicians implicitly associated psychological maturity and health with stereotypical male characteristics, but identified normal female traits as the same as those they associated with psychological immaturity or dysfunctioning. The feminist agenda has since been to deconstruct this culturally rooted, professionally accepted equation. The following essay describes the new paradigm that has emerged from this feminist project, analyzes its elaboration in the work of the Stone Center at Wellesley College, and critiques the paradigm from the perspective of Karen Horney.