The Wounded Woman. Linda Schierse Leonard
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the loss of money and pocketbook), the danger of losing direction over one’s own life (symbolized by not driving the car), and the danger of not asserting oneself against unreasonable commands (following the sadistic man’s orders).
Quite often the woman who remains an eternal girl has failed to identify with and integrate the qualities a positive father can help her develop: consciousness, discipline, courage, decision-making, self-valuation, direction. Many women in our culture today have found themselves in this position because the “cultural fathers” have not encouraged women to develop these qualities. And frequently women have actually been discouraged from this development. The result is disastrous, leaving the woman feeling weak and helpless, without resources, afraid to strike out on her own, and under the rule of old-fashioned, domineering, patriarchal principles. I have seen these patterns operate in myself and in the lives of many women who remain stuck in the puella pattern of the eternal girl. It is as though the masculine side of a woman is split into two opposites: weak young boy and perverted, sadistic old man. This combination keeps a woman from developing, since in the unconscious these two male figures secretly work together. The voice of the perverted old man says, “You cannot do it—you’re just a woman.” And the weak, sensitive boy gives in to those feelings of weakness which keep her from getting out of the destructive pattern. How many times must this happen to women in our culture when they give in to helpless and negative feelings which say they cannot create, or that all men are rotten and will only betray them. It is then that they have lost their spirit!
The “armored Amazon” is a contrasting pattern in the lives of many women. Developmentally, I find that this pattern arises as a reaction against inadequate fathering, occurring either on the personal or cultural level. In reacting against the negligent father such women often identify on the ego level with the masculine or fathering functions themselves. Since their fathers didn’t give them what they needed, they find they have to do it themselves. So they build up a strong masculine ego identity through achievement or fighting for a cause or being in control and laying down the law themselves, perhaps as a mother who rules the family as though it were a business firm. But this masculine identity is often a protective shell, an armor against the pain of abandonment or rejection by their fathers, an armor against their own softness, weakness, and vulnerability. The armor protects them positively insofar as it helps them develop professionally and enables them to have a voice in the world of affairs. But insofar as the armor shields them from their own feminine feelings and their soft side, these women tend to become alienated from their own creativity, from healthy relationships with men, and from the spontaneity and vitality of living in the moment.
In my office every day I see women who are successful in the world, accomplished in their fields, financially independent. To the outer eye they seem secure and confident, powerful and strong. But inside the safety of the therapist’s office they reveal their tears, the confessions of weariness and exhaustion, the great loneliness. Many times the image of armor comes up in their dreams. One woman dreamt of a weak little man, tired of life and about to die, who was dressed in a protective coat of armor and helmet, shield and sword. Later on in the course of analysis, as she let go of the unnecessary armor, she dreamt she found a diamond treasure hidden in a pile of open oyster shells. Her emphasis now was on being in the moment and open to relationships, and she felt softer and more mellow. The shell was now open and the genuine diamond strength accessible.
In another woman’s dreams, the armor theme came up in the image of heavy winter coats. In one dream, it was summer and as she left her childhood home, she realized she was carrying several heavy wooden hangers for winter coats, but the coats were gone. She felt she had lost her protection. As she left this house, two young men were behind her. They were lighthearted lads, full of fun and tricks, and she was afraid of them. So she speeded up her pace to get away from them, but they skipped lightly by and one untied her shoelace. Now she was terrified and, in trying to escape, ran into a forbidding-looking house full of paralyzed and crazy women. Needless to say, she awoke in horror. In reality this woman needed to drop the winter coat protection and learn to play with the lighthearted lads, but she was still frightened of them.
The woman dressed in Amazon armor is as cut off from her own center as is the eternal girl. In fact, in most women, these two patterns tend to exist together. In my own experience, the Amazon armor came first. But behind that was the frightened little girl who finally emerged and then flew off unable to settle here or there, unable to commit herself to a place or a person. Other women have started out as compliant, charming wives and turned into actively angry fighters. In most women, the two patterns are there alternating, sometimes from moment to moment. For example, one woman who did a lot of public speaking still felt like the fragile girl who was afraid she might faint before everyone, yet side by side within her were feelings of competency and authority as a speaker. She was amazed to find that other people, and especially men, experienced her as strong and competent when inwardly she felt shy and scared.
Why one woman initially follows the path of the eternal girl while another takes the route of the armored Amazon is for me still a big question and remains to be explored. My hunch is that a variety of factors contribute to which way a woman takes. Innate temperament and one’s position and role in the family seem to be major factors. The relationship to the mother is another. Body-type, racial, and socioeconomic class differences are other significant aspects. Quite often I find that the oldest daughter tends to take the Amazon route while the younger daughter becomes the eternal girl. But this is not always the case. Whether one identifies with the father or mother, and repeats or rebels against whomever is the dominant parent is another factor. In my experience these two patterns (the eternal girl and the armored Amazon) are present in most women, although one may be lived out more consciously than the other.
Both the eternal girl and the armored Amazon quite often find themselves in despair over their condition. They feel alienated from their center because they are cut off from important parts of themselves. It is as though they have a mansion for their home but are only living in a few of the rooms.
The philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, helped me to understand in myself and in the lives of my clients the source of this alienation and despair. Kierkegaard, in Sickness Unto Death, analyzes despair as a disrelationship to the Self, to the source of being human.10 For Kierkegaard there are three major forms of despair: first, despair that is unconscious; second, despair that is conscious and which manifests itself as weakness; and third, despair which is conscious and manifests itself as defiance.
In the unconscious form of despair, the person is out of relation to the Self, but is unaware of it. Such a person, according to Kierkegaard, tends to live a hedonistic life, dispersed in sensation of the moment, having no commitment to anything higher than ego-impulses. This is the stage of aestheticism and Don Juanism. Here one can see a type of existence in which people do not consciously realize they are in despair, although, as Kierkegaard points out, the compulsiveness for infinite sensation and pleasure together with intruding dark moments of boredom and anxiety reveal that all is not well.
If the person allows the dark moments of boredom and anxiety to enter fully into consciousness, then comes the awareness of despair, the realization of disrelationship to the Self, and the feeling that one is too weak to choose the Self since that demands the acceptance of one’s strength to make that decision. Here the person despairs over weakness to commit to something higher than ego-impulses. I imagine that many puellas suffer intensely in the despair of weakness—wanting to be courageous and take the risk of actuality, the risk of commitment, yet somehow afraid and unable to take the leap.
But if the person penetrates more consciously into the reason for weakness, then comes awareness that the excuse of weakness was really only a way of avoiding the strength already there. What the person originally took to be weakness is now understood to be defiance, i.e., a refusal to commit! For Kierkegaard, the despair of defiance is a higher consciousness, a realization that one has the strength to choose the Self, or in Kierkegaard’s terms, to make the leap of faith which requires acceptance of the uncontrollable and transcendent, but that one chooses not to do so in stark defiance against the powers which transcend reason and man’s finitude. In defiance, one refuses to change! In the despair of defiance, one refuses possibility and infinitude. In the despair of weakness, one refuses actuality and finitude. To refuse one is to