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Do Mean Fear Women?
Why are women a disturbing enigma to men?
Why do men feel insecure when women enter their world?
What problems are created by men’s refusal to see women as they really are?
A world-famed psychologist investigates a fascinating mystery of the sexes

Chatelaine (“The Canadian Home Journal”) 32:11 (November 1959) : 25, 50, 54-55
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      The Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung has said that woman stands in man’s blind spot. I take this to mean that most men do not see a woman as she is, and often cannot see her as an individual even though she stands confronting him. He would find it very difficult to put himself in her place. His reactions to her must often be based on what one has to conclude are blind assumptions. This creates a dilemma for both men and women.
      If this blindness is as real as it is said to be, then a man has ideas about women that come from inside himself. If this blindness is as real as it is said to be, then a man has ideas about women that come from inside himself. Dr. Jung also points out that the [50] mother is the first love, so that the experience of her creates a powerful mother-lover figure. This figure, formed in childhood, as well as the feminine forces in a man’s own nature are enough to give him many preconceived ideas about women.
      If a man’s mother failed to accept her child as a person, giving him all the strength she could, then a man can have a basic distrust of women. If she outraged his trusting dependence and failed to be what his love and need wanted her to be, or if she was silly or selfish or harsh, then his assumption may be that women are basically inferior. If his own feminine nature is crude and rudimentary, making him see all women as much alike, he will be fickle and he will call women fickle.

Lover — or a harpy?
      In a man’s dreams a figure will often appear who typifies his own feminine feeling. It is she who gives him the ardor he feels for a car, a ship, or some cherished project. It is often this inner figure who drives him forward to full accomplishment. The feminine soul of a man can be so compelling that he often calls her “She-who-must-be-obeyed.” Therefore, he naturally does not like a woman who violates his inner vision; and if he finds someone who resembles that inner vision, he may feel a devotion that makes him helpless.
      When a man’s mother has loved him devotedly he may assume that all women give endlessly, easily and without counting the cost. His mother poured life into him joyfully and with never a protest or criticism, so that he expects every woman to do just that. He can even assume that this is the sort of woman he is dealing with when he is really in the toils of a rapacious harpy. His trust can lead him into places that seem surprising if one does not remember that he may be blind. Yet if he is assuming, not looking, then it is understandable that he expects from every woman the ardent acceptance of a mother, even though his adult ways may not warrant acceptance. So a blind spot can have bad results for both men and women.
      I imagine that one of the first assumptions a man makes about women is that women are behind men, standing at the back where the mother stood, making it safe to go on. Certainly many a man needs to feel that a real woman is behind him. But never in front. Not in his line of vision, and not prominent in his man’s world. A man can praise a woman for her masculine achievements, though he may do it a little haltingly, but he prefers it not to involve him. If she is near, where she has to be taken into account, she upsets his masculine pattern so that he feels irritated, invaded and even somewhat threatened. This puzzles the woman, which may be blind of her.
      The fact is that men and women do frighten each other. Men can frighten us by their physical strength, their will power, and even by their ideas which can seem so inhuman, and so against our way of life. We frighten them by the violence of our unreasonableness, by the contagion of our emotion, and by our vagary which addles their wits. Men can make our bodies shake with terror, but men’s reason and men’s hearts can feel despair when we become nitwits or scolds.
      As the masculine side of the woman arises from her unknown depths it is an elemental force possessing her, not human at all, so at times she can frighten anyone. As the masculine side of the woman arises from her unknown depths it is an elemental force possessing her, not human at all, so at times she can frighten anyone. Power is always frightening, and the more uncontrolled it is the more dreadful to see. With the sad dingdong there is in the human heart that makes each of us feel weak if the other is strong, the heedless strength of men effaces us, and our new prominence outrages them.
      I presume that what most men need is to look out on their men’s world with an unobstructed vision. They must have a clear view of their world to see what they can do there, and how best to test themselves. Their first need is to prove their strength to themselves and to others. They create the world as we know it, and they do it mostly by pitting their capacities, both good and bad, against those of other men. Women have been present of course, but only barely, and it is the thrust and counterthrust of men that has established societies stable enough to give us some ease.

Men need opposition
      We are told that cattle in a field butt each other until it is settled which can safely butt which. Apparently this is nature’s way of measuring strength. Man’s need of the stimulus of opposition can bring forth every kind of combat. His creation by opposition seems to be inherent in him and much depends upon it, the development of the thing at stake It obviously exists in men, and in women too, of course, though it is doubtful if it is as creative in women as it can be in men. Indeed it is more often destructive, since woman’s creative way lies more in relationship. Man’s need of the stimulus of opposition can bring forth every kind of combat. His creation by opposition seems to be inherent in him and much depends upon it, the development of the thing at stake, and the quality of the men involved is proved by their ability to endure the hardship of the contest.
      I do not forget that this is only my impression seen from outside the man’s world, and so seen a little crookedly. I also know from men themselves how their work can drain them, and though it is good work, and helps others, it can leave them feeling unnourished and tragically incomplete. When women help men in every way they can, and when they protest again and again as they see the battle consuming the man, they learn that achievement can be man’s basic need, and that he has to expend himself, that it is the essence of masculinity to face difficulty.
      If this is man’s way then he naturally feels some need of support, decent praise, and a fair amount of indulgence. When he sees women moved by personal ambition as he is, and driven by work as he himself is driven, he inevitably feels repulsion. There is too much of his way in the world already and he needs a woman to be someone he cannot fight, and can love. So part [54] of a man’s horror of the too-dominant woman is a simple cry of “Not more of the same thing!”
      But if achievement has to be understood at its greatest, it must also be seen in its lesser aspects. But if achievement has to be understood at its greatest, it must also be seen in its lesser aspects. If it creates everything from bolts and books to bombs, it also constitutes much of the fun of the man’s world. So much enjoyment and so much skill goes into “playing for place” and into “saving face” and “gaining face” and making someone else “lose face.” The sheer liveliness of pretending you are stronger than you are and in making others believe it, is a thing to be envied. Even a woman looking in from outside can see the zest and amusement of it, though the seriousness with which it is taken may leave her unmoved.
      So how could a man be anything but annoyed when women enter his world? He has built it up with his ultimate effort, and if he has destroved it again and again, he has also built it again and again. In his world he cannot test his strength against a woman, not as hardness against hardness with rules regarded and honor for all. Hardness toward her brings out a dreadful hardness in her, and there is no honor for anyone.
      He is generally justified in his fear that, at her coming, thought will be less clear and all his specialized achievements will be disregarded or condemned. Perhaps he is right to feel distrust of woman, and if she is not wanted in his professional world there are real grounds for his fear of what she might do to it. After all, he has had a long experience of her.

Her doubt belittles him
      One of the things she can do is to make him feel foolish; for a woman tends to be blind to the idea a man represents. Perhaps this is the greatest difference between the attitudes of men and women. Men so often serve an abstract idea, and women persist in seeing the ordinary human being who is doing it. She can, at times, even enjoy making him feel more ordinary than he is.
      She can come to his office and, just by her presence, reduce him to his simple humanity. She can make him feel like a little boy caught at a game of pretend. She may not see what he has accomplished or is trying to accomplish. He may want her to see his long-term view, and she may want him to see her immediate view. She may want human beings not to suffer and he is perfectly willing that they should suffer if something Is accomplished by it. So she can be chaos for him and when his aim is to order events and clarify meaning, though the goal may be far in the future and hard on humanity, then by her unexpressed doubt she can belittle all his efforts, and so give him every reason to fear her.
      Just because she is a woman she can resemble his mother who gave him life, and who in an angry mood could destroy his comfort and his safety, could even efface his sense of belonging to himself. Precisely because a woman was his world when he was helpless, a woman can easily make him feel helpless, and as though, in her presence, his world must pause. It is only too easy for a man to confuse the woman before his eyes with the feminine force in his own soul and if the actual woman lames him he can feel a chill of helplessness as though his own heart doubted himself.
      Yet when a woman comes into his world and he sees that her mind is good, that she is a likable human being, and that she serves an impersonal end even as he does, why then she has broken the established rule he rests on, and so he has new cause for dismay. He can feel generous admiration, and perhaps a sense of gain, but he can also feel that if a woman has become this new person then he himself must change.
      It looks as though a man wants for his own comfort, and needs for his efficiency and masculine honor, to remain unconscious about women. But if he becomes conscious of a woman as she is in herself, then he is inevitably confronted with the feminine in his own nature. He will have to decide which is the woman, and which is his own feminine nature that he sees in her. He can no longer leave that part of himself in her hands which makes him live blindly... When women remain in the centre of his blind spot he can devote himself to his interesting and arduous role. But if he becomes conscious of a woman as she is in herself, then he is inevitably confronted with the feminine in his own nature. He will have to decide which is the woman, and which is his own feminine nature that he sees in [55] her. He can no longer leave that part of himself in her hands which makes him live blindly, behaving like a dependent child, or a moody woman, or a willful pasha.
      It is probable that greater awareness of what women are like in themselves is increasing in men, for many are tolerant and open-minded in their attitude to woman’s achievements. They are also our severest critics, and we women count on both these things as our greatest security. But the blind spot still exists, and it can make us feel very helpless. This may be one reason why so many women feel that now we must look to ourselves. This could be the great solution. Everything I have seen in my long life, and in my work as an analytical psychologist, forces me to believe that women have reached a place where they must become responsible for their own quality.

Man will always lead
      This, of course, means woman becoming conscious of the man in her own nature, its capacity and desperate need of clearer thought, its independence and loyalty to itself, combined with awareness of the depth and human value of her feminine nature. This change seems to be part of the great revolution of our age. Men feel it and it makes them insecure, as though irrational forces were astir, and so it is urgent that as individuals we women make sense.
      So much is astir in both men and women, we are too involved in it to assess it rightly. But no matter how great the changes are, one assumes that man will always be in the ascendant, with woman as his satellite. This requires polarity between them, a difference and so an attraction, and one would not have it otherwise.
      I can easily imagine both men and women becoming more admirable than they are now, but I would not like to think of man as any less strong than he sometimes is, or of woman without the great heart she can have.
      If we want to look at our greatest possibilities and see man with his feminine side integrated, and woman with her masculine side integrated, that is a vision of noble balance that may well inspire and frighten women as well as men. It would be honest fear as we both have so far to go, and the difficulties are so great. But we could start, and out of mercy for each other we can hardly do less than make the attempt.
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