Carl Jung on Man and Woman.
A man often makes a decidedly infantile resistance to a woman and therefore at the same time to his own unconscious side.
Women and the unconscious are, to him, closely connected and he believes he must save himself from both of them, sometimes in panic.
A man also has a secret fear of a woman’s opinions.
Yahweh had this fear of Sophia and yet she helped him to create the world; he took on too much, without moderation.
A woman is more likely to acknowledge her own duality.
A man is continually blinded by his intellect and does not learn through insight.
A woman is necessary to force a man to live in the concrete world. If he has a relationship with a woman he is no longer only an intellect whose wings hover over everything.
When he marries he becomes concrete, is the husband of this particular woman in the world, and has a real address and specific responsibilities.
Love between male and female is only the compensation for the enormous tension between the two principles.
This contrast between male and female is expressed cosmologically in India through Shiva and Shakti.
Shakti creates Maya to make Shiva visible; the female principle builds reality.
The greatest darkness is always felt through the opposite sex.
A woman thinks, for instance, “If he were only different.”
But her supposed vis-a-vis is only her own projection.
There are women who believe that man will deflect them from their goals and men who often believe that women want to keep them from their work; yet the real causes are either fear of the other sex or of one’s own unconscious.
A marriage is more likely to succeed if the woman follows her own star and remains conscious of her wholeness than if she constantly concerns herself with her husband’s star and his wholeness.
A man would not think of following his wife’s star because this function of relationship is not developed in him.
He thinks of his own star and of his own work.
The woman must think of herself and although she may be more advanced in wholeness than her husband she must not look back at him, for only then is the way clear for him to follow her.
She must not cling too closely or he will feel like a baby being fed oats.
The wrong kind of behaviour by the woman, can prevent the man’s growth.
When an erotic relationship comes to an end, a woman can lose her mind; but a man can also look at other women.
I am not saying this just because I am a man, but because I often hear women complain, saying that their husbands are so true and attached to them.
The woman’s intention is to hold onto the man, as this is inherent in the breeding instinct.
But it is not interesting for a man to be harnessed to one woman; he wants freedom.
Evidently Nature has arranged the female psyche accordingly.
Women who live by their instincts only find a man interesting if they are not quite sure of him, if he might possibly run off; such a man is far more interesting to them than one paralyzed by fidelity.
Nature is not foolish and means the woman to exert all her charms in order to hold the man.
Many women unfortunately make terrible mistakes once they are married; they put all their efforts into keeping the house and not into the erotic sphere.
The woman often plays with the hope that the man she loves will fall ill, so that he is no longer able to escape and is completely at her mercy.
In a marriage neither partner sits on a throne.
When there is infidelity and one despairs and believes that life is impossible without a relationship with the partner, fate has demonstrated that one is not grown up and is not yet mature.
It implies an extraordinary maturity for one to be able to renounce the support given by a relationship.
We must be careful not to give up our existence; we must be able to exist alone.
In such a situation the attitude of the person to the supra-personal is decisive and the problem of the religious decision becomes the determining factor.
We can only adjust to the will of God.
We must not establish a power complex of superiority; the important and only problem is how to confront the conflict one self, not what the other person does.
All of nature goes along with a man when his decision in answer to his great problem is right.
All grain means wheat; all ore means gold.
The only thing that matters is what a man does with his problem — what he himself does for himself.
Only when the people involved are dull, or when there are serious material needs, is a marriage free from certain difficulties between the man and the woman.
When culture and differentiation are present, marriage immediately becomes more problematical.
There are some women who unconsciously desire their husband’s death and this wish can actually kill — it only needs a chair that tilts or a rug that skids.
Everything that vitally concerns us but is suppressed and not acknowledged, whether it is good or evil, will be pursued without our knowing — and this can lead to murder.
~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Pages 51-54.
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