The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation
The images on which we feed govern our lives.
If we allow ourselves to become garbage dumps for the soft-core porn of advertising and the soaps, our femininity is desecrated.
The task of freeing oneself from the father and mother complex is no less arduous for men, in whom femininity is even more psychically raped by collective values.
Their dreams too are full of mutilated baby girls, young women being dragged in chains, grandmothers crying, prisons and towers in which the feminine is encapsulated.
Many men, however, are acutely aware of their own threatened femininity and the anguish in their wives and partners.
As one male therapist wrote to me in a letter,
“For so long now, I have been wrestling with, agonizing over, and trying to help women to see their own locked-up femininity. I have counseled many couples prior to marriage, and have seen too many men who have no idea at all of the feminine within themselves, and even less of the feminine in their intended bridge. I feel so impotent when faced with the magnitude of the problem…I have believed for a long time that in some way the male can bring the female to bloom, helping her to come into full flower from a tightly closed bud.
I also know that for a man to be able to do this, he must be in touch with his own true masculinity — not the usually accepted macho type — but true masculinity which is strong enough to recognize the feminine in himself as well.” — Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation