(Horney, 1950). To Horney, socialisation was vital for personality development given that we are a social species. The Oedipus complex to her was essentially a social conflict: clinging to one parent and jealousy of the other was anxiety caused by a disturbance in the parent-child relationship - a relational view. She also considered culture as highly influential on personality: culture rather than anatomy was responsible for psychic differences between men and women, and penis envy, nothing more than a social and cultural phenomenon. By emphasizing social and cultural influences, dimensions she felt Freud overlooked, not only did Horney challenge Freud's psychosexual view of personality, she pioneered a new dimension to psychological thought: gender-based psychology. By doing so however she overlooked a critical influence on personality, namely biology and genetics. .
John Bowlby's (1907 – 1990) theory of personality, whilst similar, took another view. While agreeing with Horney that childhood is critical for personality development, and that parents play a vital role in shaping their children's personalities, he conceived of the relationship between mother and child in biological and ethological terms. In doing so he too rejected Freud's psychosexual and Freud's 'cupboard love' explanation. Indeed he proposed that personality is developed through an attachment process whereby babies are innately programmed to form attachments to their mothers as key attachment figures from birth. While early stages of the process do have survival value as the child achieves protection and nutrition, Bowlby noted that feeding was not the basis of the relationship. Rather the basis of the relationship was a deep affectionate bond between mother and child, which itself becomes an important part of personality. According to Bowlby this bond serves as an internal working model and basis for all future relationships from infancy to adult life.