Freud's theory on penis envy was criticized and debated by other psychoanalysts, such as Karen Horney, Ernest Jones, Helene Deutsch, and Melanie Klein, specifically on the treatment of penis envy as a fixed operation as opposed to a formation constructed or used in a secondary manner to fend off earlier wishes.
)[7] Penis envy stems from Freud's concept of the Oedipus complex in which the phallic conflict arises for males, as well as for females.
A third consequence of penis envy involves the discovery of the inferiority of this clitoris, suggested through the observation that masturbation is further removed from females than from males.
This is, according to Freud, because clitoral masturbation is a masculine activity that is slowly repressed throughout puberty (and shortly after discovering the penis envy) in an attempt to make room for the female's femininity[13] by transitioning the erotogenic zone from the clitoris to the vagina.
[9] The result of these anxieties culminates in the girl giving up on her desire for the penis, and instead puts it in the place of the wish for a child; and, with that goal in mind, she takes her father as the love-object and makes the mother into the object of her jealousy.
[14] Freud considered that in normal female development penis envy transformed into the wish for a man and/or a baby.
[citation needed] Karen Horney — a German psychoanalyst who also placed great emphasis on childhood experiences in psychological development — was a particular advocate of this view.
[29] Betty Friedan referred to penis envy as a purely parasitic social bias typical of Victorianism and particularly of Freud's own biography, and showed how the concept played a key role in discrediting alternative notions of femininity in the early to mid twentieth century: "Because Freud's followers could only see woman in the image defined by Freud – inferior, childish, helpless, with no possibility of happiness unless she adjusted to being man's passive object – they wanted to help women get rid of their suppressed envy, their neurotic desire to be equal.