The Wounded Woman. Linda Schierse Leonard
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I see to be an aspect of the eternal girl. The despair of defiance appears to me to be an aspect of the armored Amazon. And yet in the end they are secretly the same—two poles of a split in the self.
Women who fall into the archetypal pattern of the puella, caught in the despair of weakness, need to become aware of their strength and shake off their victim identity. Women who are caught in the armored Amazon’s tendency to control need to see how control can be a false strength and to value the openness to what cannot be controlled. For Kierkegaard, resolution and transformation come ultimately when despair in all stages is overcome through a leap of faith. In this leap one accepts at the same time one’s weakness and one’s strength, the intermixture of the finite and infinite realms in being human, and the realization that human beings must move between the opposites rather than identifying with an absolute.
Therapeutically, I found in the work of the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung a great help in understanding this kind of situation which exists in many people’s lives. Jung thought that the life of each person was a complex and mysterious whole. But the particular course of their development, coming from personal family experiences, cultural influences, and innate temperament, tended to lead a person to emphasize one part of the personality and to de-emphasize the conflicting part. Yet, that other opposing, unaccepted side was there wanting to be acknowledged and often intruded upon the consciously accepted side, affecting the person’s behavior and disturbing his or her relationships. Jung thought the task of personal growth was to see the value of both sides and to try to integrate them so that they could work together in a fruitful way for the person. I find this to be important therapeutically for the wounded woman who finds herself in a conflict between these two patterns: the eternal girl and the armored Amazon. Each has its value. Each can learn from the other. And the integration of the two is a foundation for the emerging woman.
Although a woman may be wounded from an impaired relation to the father, it is possible for her to work towards healing the wound. We bear the influences of our parents, but we are not fated to remain merely the products of our parents. There is in the psyche, according to Jung, a natural healing process which moves toward balance and wholeness. In the psyche also are natural patterns of behavior which he called archetypes and which are available to serve as inner models, even when outer models are absent or unsatisfactory. A woman has within herself, for instance, all the potentialities of the father archetype, and these can often be reached if she is willing to risk coming in touch with the unconscious. So, even though the personal or cultural fathers initially may have shaped the conscious image of ourselves as women and what we can do in the world and in relation to men, there is within us as well the positive and creative aspects of the inner archetypal father which can compensate for many of the negative influences in our actual life histories. This potentiality to gain a better relationship to the father principle is one we all have within us. Dream images often reveal previously unknown sides of the father that we can experience in order to become more whole and mature. The following case illustrates this view.
One woman with whom I worked grew up under the authoritarian rule of a rigid father who did not value the feminine. Hard work and discipline, masculine occupations were what he stressed. Weakness or vulnerability of any kind was not allowed. So the daughter adopted these values and always kept very busy planning and controlling her life. She didn’t allow herself to relax or to show any weakness. But this put her at an emotional distance from others and at a distance from her own heart center. She came into therapy shortly after she developed a skin disease which became more and more visible to others. It was as though her vulnerability wanted to be acknowledged. She couldn’t hide it anymore, for there it was on her skin for all to see. In the initial dream she had at the start of therapy she was stranded high on the tower of a skyscraper. Up there she could see all the plan of traffic flow in the city, but she couldn’t get down to the ground to do anything. At last a fun-loving man climbed up the tower and helped her down to earth, and then she ran barefoot with him, playing on the grass. This dream showed the side of the masculine that had been missing in her development since it wasn’t provided by her stern and serious father. She needed to relate to an instinctual man who could play with her.
Early in the analysis she also had a dream which showed the influence of her father. In the dream she wanted to show her father her skin disease, but he refused to look at it. He refused to allow her any vulnerability and she had unconsciously adopted his attitude towards herself. This affected not only her emotional life but also her creativity. Although she had a great deal of artistic talent and creative potential, she went into one of the more rational sciences, and then never finished her studies. It was as though she was on her father’s path and not her own. In the course of analysis, she began to accept her vulnerable side and allowed herself to play. The man in her first dream provided an image to accept those areas of herself. On the outer level she then met a warm, spontaneous man with whom she fell in love, opening up her vulnerable side. She started school again, this time also in an area which she loved. Shortly after this, the image of her father changed in her dreams. In one dream she was told her father had died. Then she heard a bell calling her to the other side of the river. She started to go across on a bridge, but the bridge was not quite finished and so she slid into the water to get across. The death of the father symbolized the end of his rigid reign, and now she was called to cross over to the other side of the river to a new side of herself. The bridge to that new side was already partly built, but she had to get into the water to cross all the way. For her this meant to get into the flow of life and her feelings. As she did so, the image of her father changed in her dreams, and he became more accepting. In one dream she had lost something that belonged to him and instead of rebuking her for her failure, he accepted her. In another dream her father was working for a creative rock musician and she was proud of him. It was as though the dreams and her life were dancing together, each making new movements in turn so that she was able to move into a new rhythmic way of being. Through her pursuit of self-knowledge and relating to her dreams in therapy, she was able to connect with her playful, flowing feeling side, and her femininity and creativity were released. When she experienced the compensatory energies of the father archetype within, the old wound coming from her stern, rigid, and unaccepting father began to heal.
CHAPTER TWO
SACRIFICE OF THE DAUGHTER
Your nature, princess, is indeed noble and true;
But events fester, and divinity is sick.
Euripides
The father-daughter wound is a condition of our culture and, to that extent, the plight of all men and women today. Women frequently are considered inferior to men. Men often are put down if they show feminine qualities. Implicit in the father-daughter wound is a disturbed relation between the masculine and feminine principles.1 And this affects not only individuals but also partners, groups, and whole societies. Both men and women suffer from it. Both are confused about their own identities and roles vis-à-vis the other.
The roots of the father-daughter wound are deep and can be seen clearly in the Greek drama Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides. The drama shows how a father comes to sacrifice his daughter and portrays the wound the father feels when he is driven to this end. It also reveals the limited view of the feminine in a patriarchally ruled society. Iphigenia is the oldest and the most beloved daughter of King Agamemnon. And yet, in the play, she is sacrificed, sentenced to death by her very own father, who loves her most dearly. How can this happen? How is it possible for a father to sacrifice a daughter?
At the play’s beginning we find Agamemnon in deep despair, halfway to madness, because he has agreed to the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia. The Hellenes had pledged war on Troy because the Trojan, Paris, had stolen Helen, most beautiful of women and the wife of Agamemnon’s brother, Menelaus. But when the army went to Aulis Bay, ready to sail for battle, there was no wind. Crazed with the lust for battle, the army became impatient and Agamemnon’s rule was threatened. Fearing the loss of his power and glory and the command of the army, Agamemnon consulted an oracle that said he must sacrifice his first-born daughter for the greater glory of Greece. The sacrifice was to be made to the goddess Artemis in exchange for wind to sail. In despair, Agamemnon finally agreed to the decree and sent for Iphigenia, saying that she was to be married to Achilles. But this was only a pretext