Summary
Erich Neumann: The Psychology of the Feminine
If a woman wants to understand herself, it is necessary for her to discover a deep psychology of the Feminine that overcomes the male-patriarchal perspective that has been characteristic of Western consciousness for thousands of years. In this book, Neumann collected, expanded and reworked his three essays on the psychology of women, which complement each other and merge into a study on this topic. They consider the psychological stages of a woman's development, the Moon, matriarchal consciousness and Mozart's "Magic Flute". The author saw in Mozart's fantastic world the true conflict and reconciliation of the male and female worlds. The development of such a synthesis of the feminine and the masculine in the psychological reality of the individual and the collective is, he claims, one of the fundamental, future-oriented tasks of society and the individual. In Western consciousness - and this is the key idea of this book - a system of one-sided male-patriarchal values prevails and a fundamental ignorance of the specificity and diversity of female psychology. Such a situation has decisively contributed to the crisis that shakes our age. Therefore, the revaluation of female psychology and a new understanding of its specific character is inevitable today. Not only for the mental health of the individual, but also for the health of the entire collective. If a woman wants to understand herself, but also if the male-patriarchal world, sick of one-sidedness, wants to heal, it is necessary to rediscover this "difference" of the female psyche. Analytical psychology has recognized that the feminine is present and active in the unconscious man, and that the masculine is present and active in the woman. In order to understand all the problems related to love relationships and marriage, we need an in-depth psychology of women that would take into account these new findings. It will contribute to men and women understanding their own nature more fully.
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