“So it is that a man can find in such a woman an image or picture of the other part of himself, otherwise unknown to him, which indeed he does not recognize as belonging to himself. This image seems to be in her; he perceives it, but as though it were her feeling, not his own. “
“For the man, to find and love woman who bears for him the symbol of his soul, whose qualities reflect his unconscious feminine side, is potentially, an experience of deep spiritual significance, holding for him the possibility of development through the integration of parts of his psyche which were previously unrealized. For the woman who carries this symbol, however, the subjective experience is necessarily very different. Its value for her lies in evoking and tending the man’s interest – his love. The richer and more creative parts of her own feminine nature lie deeply buried within her, hidden even from herself. It is almost as though another woman (perhaps Mother Nature herself?) lies sleeping within her, inaccessible except as she may be quickened into life by the man, as Brunnhilde was awakened by Siegfried’s kiss.”
“This ‘opinionating’ is not to be confused with a real judgment based on external facts. It is true that in certain cases a man may be so occupied with his intellectual life that he has nothing to put into a relationship with a woman. But the falsity in the case I am considering rests in the a priori nature of the judgment that allows nothing to the situation. It is not that the woman has tried to find values in the relationship and failed, but that by her a priori judgment she blots out the man in one stroke. If a woman makes a critical atmosphere in the beginning, the man will certainly hesitate to leave his own masculine sphere where he feels himself secure. In the realm of feeling, which is properly the woman’s world, a man tends to feel hesitant, rather at a disadvantage, and if the woman’s attitude is critical he is forced over to the intellectual side and is prevented from functioning on any but the most impersonal basis.
This unseen hero may show himself only through the woman’s depreciation of real men. But this depreciation is proof of his presence in her unconscious as a criterion. He holds for the woman such overwhelming values that all other men pale in comparison. The woman cannot bring these values into life through a living relation to the man, for he only exists in her unconscious, nor, while he thus keeps her from life, can she obtain his values in any other way. “
“But the fact is, that deepest experiences of our inner life cannot be communicated. If one cannot have a secret, there are certain secret things from which one is shut out. Certain things in one’s own psyche will not tolerate exposure.”
“It almost seems that America is moving toward a matriarchal state of society, in which a strong efficient woman marries a rather undeveloped and feminine man who takes a filial relation to her. The woman is everything – mother, provider, organizer – and the man merely an adjunct, however necessary, to the household.”
“Unless the man can solve the problem of his masculine adaptation to the world, in his marriage he can be nothing but a son to the dominant mother-wife. Even in the place which has been left to him, he will son fail to satisfy her emotionally. For when a man is sexually involved with a woman who is psychologically his mother-provider, he is psychologically imprisoned, being held on that infantile level where pleasure and satisfaction represent happiness, and happiness for him remains a goal in itself. The sexuality of men is so closely linked with physical needs and satisfactions that a long discipline is always required to gain release on that plane from the dominance of the pleasure principle.”
“… not until the woman has done everything possible toward making herself conscious in the relationship to her husband and has left no stone unturned to work out something of reality between them, unblurred by assumptions, illusions and projections, is she justified in violently breaking her association with him.”
“The weak know no mercy. Their weakness makes demands on the strengths of the strong until the last gasp, and the strong cannot turn and throw them off. Their very strength hands them over, bound to those dependent on them.”
“In many women, however, love of the offspring remains of an almost animal-like quality, which cannot be called love of the child, of the person, at all. The child represents to such a mother a little piece of herself which has become partly separated and which she passionately loves on account of the still unbroken bond with herself.”
“During the period of infancy mother and child form a natural unit, unbreakable except at the cost of great violence to both. As time goes on, however, this oneness, at least on the physical side, is gradually broken up. Simultaneously the child should win for himself an emotional, or psychological, separateness, but the achievement of independence is a difficult task in which the mother must share if it is to be successfully accomplished. “
“The power which determines the daughter’s action and hampers her in the living of her own life is not the woman who is her mother but, instead, it is the imago of mother which her individual mother carries.”
“There is another more subtle aspect of the mother-child problem which cannot be overlooked. It depends on the identification between the unconscious of mother and child… Because of this identification with his mother’s unconscious the child is in a condition of participation mystique with her. Whatever lives unrecognized in her unconscious exists also in the psyche of the child, albeit in nebulous form. A recognition of this link is a most powerful incentive to a woman to grapple more seriously than ever before with the problems of her own psychological development. For when she becomes a mother, a woman incurs the deepest obligation to acquaint herself with her unconscious problems, not only for her own sake but also in order to safeguard her child from harm of a most subtle and insidious kind.”
“Children are in participation mystique with their mother, and the illness of her unconscious will also be their illness. If they are not to be harmed, she must keep her problems in consciousness and really struggle with them – then the children will not suffer. But if she remains unaware of something of which she should be conscious the child will be affected unfavorably.”
“In myths the acquiring of individuality, of personal autonomy, is always represented as a theft, a stealing of something which the gods have reserved for themselves; for to be individual is to be godlike. Thus we have Adam and Eve stealing the knowledge of good and evil – a knowledge in their case closely linked with the stealing of instinct. The story of Prometheus stealing the divine fire and bringing it to earth has the same motif.”
“Sexuality can never be trivial to a woman who is in touch with the feminine principle, the Eros, within. Only by repressing and disregarding her emotions can she accept the embrace of a man who does not profoundly stir her, and if she does accept it, she no longer functions as a woman, but takes her sexuality in masculine fashion. The majority of girls, however, who have fallen into this way of acting are really entirely unawakened – their emotions are sleeping. “
“A girl who allows herself to be guided in this way bu the man’s desire loses touch more and more with herself. Perhaps she yielded at first to an idea of what would bring her happiness. She was disillusioned by the event. She thought that she had experienced all that life had to offer in that field.”
“There must be no attempt at self-justification to save one’s face, no patronizing or impertinent dissection of the partner’s character and psychology, no wandering from the actual incident into easy generalities. Truth may be served only if each one holds loyally to his purpose of discovering his own hidden motives through an understanding of this bit of life. If the discussion is carried on in order to gain a realization of the unconscious elements of the incident, then the very difficulties which inevitably arise between two people serve to tear down the veil of unconsciousness in which many of their motives are masked from themselves. In this way a relationship unlike any other may be built up.”
“Misunderstanding between two people who love each other are practically always due to unrecognized ego desires or to dark unknown shadowy things lurking in the hinterland of consciousness. The difficulty often touches the weakest spot, the most intimate inferiority. It is connected with things hardly admitted to oneself; the deepest instinct of self-preservation hides them even from the nearest and dearest friend.”
“A persona is as necessary to a conscious woman as to an unconscious one – only instead of being a mask of conventional design which is mechanically worn, it must be developed as a living function relating the human being in a purposive way to the outer world. Above all it must have complete flexibility, so that it never conceals the individual from herself nor prevents her from appearing to others exactly as she feels whenever she wishes to do so.
In dreams the persona is often represented by clothing, and the symbol is an apt one, for clothes signify much.”
“The persona must agree closely with the inner reality, but this obligation does not mean that a woman can take the liberty in every situation of expressing the whole of her thought entirely unclothed, as it were… Thoughts and feelings must always be mediated by an appropriate mask of manner and word, so that they may be adapted to the situation and comprehensible to the audience. Fully as many people fail to make satisfactory relationships through lack of a persona as through too much persona – a fact that few realize. Women especially are apt to be sinners in this respect. They expect the world to be tolerant of them if only they are true to themselves. But they forget that one person’s truth may be contrary to another’s, may indeed be quite destructive to it. For truth is a powerful and a dangerous commodity and needs to be adequately guarded. It should be clothed for the occasion, and not indiscriminately exposed. “
“We are obliged in everyday life to deal with the surface – the mask of the person is worn by us ourselves no less than by others. We do not know what is behind that mask. If we are good judges of character, we may be able to guess something of what lies behind, but such knowledge does not necessarily make for relatedness. Only conscious people can be related in the psychological sense of the term, for they alone can reveal themselves intentionally. Conscious relationship demands not only that A know what is behind B’s mask, but that B shall know too, and shall be willing for A to know. And the same must be true of A and his mask in relation to B.”
