Some women, instead of resorting to dependency, attempt to repair feelings of weakness, inadequacy, and inferiority through compensatory striving for power. These women find dependency abhorrent 'because it is demeaning to their self esteem. They are engaged in a constant struggle against an underlying wish to be dependent, which, in the end, they reject. These are the women popularly known as "castrating females." They compensate for their supposed weakness through masculine dramatization that is, by an exaggeration of the so called "masculine" traits. Such women are hard hitting, extremely competitive, and overly aggressive, particularly with men, and seek always to be in a dominant position. They tend to marry submissive men, who permit them to act out the fantasy of being the husband instead of the wife. This type of woman unconsciously denies the absence of a penis; instead she believes that she has one, and this fantasy enables her to feel the competitive equal of any man, or even the better of the two.

The self image of the power driven woman, therefore, differs from the self image of the dependent woman. The former sees herself as a "phallic" woman; the latter sees herself as a castrated man. This difference in the self-image makes the power driven woman especially prone to a castration anxiety. Any threat to the fantasied phallus may generate such an anxiety and lead to a sudden collapse of the adaptive capacity. The threat may consist of an actual failure in adaptation, such as the loss of a job or a competitive defeat; or there need be no actual failure at all, but nevertheless a symbolic perception of the life situation as a castration. The latter category includes insults to the integrity of the body, such as operations and injuries, or changes in the sociobiological role, such as marriage, pregnancy, or childbirth. The end result, however, is exactly the same, whether the failure is real or imagined, and the woman is left with a conviction of helplessness. A power driven woman who finds herself in this situation generally attempts first to retrieve the penis in order to reinstate the original power position. Her first thought is of self sufficiency. Should this attempt fail, she may fall back on the only other magical solution available to her, that of dependency. Thus, the two motivations, power and dependency, can be considered opposite sides of the same coin. (see THE POWER MOTIVATION PART II)