Robert A. Johnson – SHE: Understanding the Feminine Psychology
The story of Amor and Psyche is one of the best elucidations available of the psychology of the feminine personality.
It is an ancient, pre-Christian myth, first recorded in classical Greek times, having enjoyed a long oral tradition before that; it is still pertinent for us today.
That it should be so is not strange, for, as the chemistry of the human body is the same today as it was in Greek times, so also is the unconscious psychological dynamic of human personality.
Basic human needs, both physical and psychological, remain fixed, although the form in which they are satisfied may vary from time to time.
This is why when we want to study the basic patterns of human behavior and personality it is instructive to go to the earliest sources where their portrayal is apt to be so direct and so simple we cannot fail to comprehend them.
Then, perhaps, if we can understand the basic structure, we can begin to see the variations peculiar to our own time.
Myths are rich sources of psychological insight.
Great literature, as all great art, records and portrays the human condition with indelible accuracy.
Myths are a special kind of literature.
They are usually not written or created by a single individual, but are the product of the collective imagination and experience of an entire age and culture.
Myths seem to develop gradually: Certain motifs emerge, are elaborated, and finally are rounded out as people tell and retell certain stories that catch and hold their interest.
Thus themes that are universal are kept alive, while those elements peculiar to single individuals usually drop away.
Myths, therefore, portray a collective image.
They tell about things that are true for all men.
This belies our current rationalistic society’s definition of myth as something untrue or imaginary.
Why, that’s a myth; it’s not true at all, we hear.
But actually, for the reasons suggested above, a myth is profoundly and universally true.
A myth may be a fantasy; it may be a product of the imagination, but it is nonetheless true and real.
It depicts levels of reality that include the outer rational world as well as the less understood inner world within the psyche of each individual.
This confusion concerning the narrow definition of reality may be illustrated by the thinking of a small child after a nightmare.
A parent may say, to be comforting, It was only a dream; the monster was not real.
But the child is unconvinced, and rightly so.
To him it was real, as alive and real as any outer experience.
The monster he dreamed about was in his head and not in his bedroom, but it had, nonetheless, an awesome reality, with power over the child’s emotional and physical reactions.
It had an inner reality for him that cannot and should not be denied.
A myth is a product of the collective imagination and not of scientific or rational development, but it is profoundly real.
Because of its manner of development, through years of retelling and refining by countless people, it carries a powerful collective meaning.
Myths have been carefully studied by many psychologists.
G. Jung, for example, in his studies of the underlying structure of the human personality, paid particular attention to myths.
He found in them an expression of basic psychological patterns.
We may hope to do the same with our study of Amor and Psyche.
But first we must learn to think mythologically, a delightful and thrilling process.
Powerful things happen when we touch the mythological thinking that myths, fairy tales, and our own dreams bring to us.
The terms and settings of the old myths are strange; they seem archaic and distant to us, but if we listen to them carefully and take them seriously, we begin to hear and to understand.
Sometimes it is necessary to translate a symbolic meaning, but this is not difficult once we see how it can be done.
Many psychologists who have read Amor and Psyche have interpreted it as a statement of the feminine personality.
Perhaps it would be wise at the very beginning of this study to say that we are speaking of femininity wherever it is found, in men as well as in women.
Jung, in one of his most profound insights, showed that, just as genetically every man has recessive female chromosomes and hormones, so too every man has a group of feminine psychological characteristics that make up a minority element within him.
A woman likewise has a psychological masculine minority component within her.
The man’s feminine side Jung called the anima; the woman’s masculine side he called the animus.
Much has been written about the anima and the animus, and we will have more to say about both of them later.
At this point, suffice it to say that whenever we speak of the feminine aspects of the Amor and Psyche myth, we are speaking not only about women, but also about the man’s anima, his feminine side.
The connection may be more obvious to a woman, since femininity is her major psychological quality, yet there will also be something of a parallel to a man’s anima.
Let us begin then with our story of Amor and Psyche.
It seems that there was a kingdom.
There is always a kingdom; that is the beginning of everything.
There is a king and a queen, and they have three daughters.
The two eldest daughters are ordinary princesses (if a princess can be ordinary); they are not very remarkable.
The third daughter, who is named Psyche, is an extraordinary person.
She is beautiful, charming, so like a goddess in her bearing, her speech, and her whole personality that a cult of worship has sprung up around her.
People have begun to say, Here is the new Aphrodite. Here is a new goddess.
Now Aphrodite was an age-old goddess of femininity who had reigned since the beginning; no one knew just how long.
But people began saying that Psyche was taking her place.
In the poetic and beautiful terms of the myth, the ashes of the sacramental fires in the temple of Aphrodite grew cold.
The different origins of these two, Aphrodite and Psyche, are significant.
When the genitals of the god Uranus were severed and fell into the sea, the sea was fertilized and Aphrodite was born.
Her birth was immortalized in a magnificent painting by Botticelli called Birth of Venus.
(Venus is the Roman name for Aphrodite.)
The painting depicts Venus being borne in upon a wave, standing on a shell; it is an exquisitely beautiful thing.
On the other hand, it was rumored that Psyche was born when a dewdrop from the sky fell upon the land.
Here we begin our mythological unraveling.
The difference between these two births, if properly understood, reveals the different natures of these two goddesses.
Aphrodite is a goddess born out of the sea; she is primeval, oceanic femininity.
She is of a pre-conscious evolutionary time.
She is at home at the bottom of the sea and holds court there.
As Erich Neumann has said, she is the goddess of swamp fertility.
In psychological terms, she reigns in the unconscious, symbolized by the waters of the sea.
She is therefore scarcely approachable on normal, conscious, human terms.
One can hardly cope with oceanic femininity; one might as well argue with a tidal wave.
It is difficult to touch or come to terms with the Aphrodite nature, as it is primitive femininity.
One can admire it, worship it, or be crushed by it.
Or one can go the way of this myth—Psyche’s way—of evolving to a new level of femininity.
Those are the choices.
Every woman has an Aphrodite in her who is easily recognized.
Her chief characteristics are vanity, conniving lust, fertility, and tyranny when she is crossed.
There are marvelous stories about Aphrodite and her court.
She has a servant who walks before her carrying a mirror so that she may constantly admire herself.
Someone continually makes perfume for her.
She is jealous and will stand no competition whatsoever.
She is always arranging marriages and is never satisfied until everyone is busily serving her aims of fertility.
Women who are matchmakers and who are not satisfied if any bachelor is left loose are Aphrodites.
Actually, one sees Aphrodite everywhere.
At every supermarket, Aphrodite parks her grocery cart squarely in the middle of the aisle and says, If you won’t court me, you will at least bump into me.
That is Aphrodite.
It is very embarrassing for a modern, reasonably intelligent woman to discover her own Aphrodite nature and all of the primitive, instinctive tricks she plays.
There are women who get into a rage if their husbands deviate so much as an inch from the straight and narrow line they have dictated.
This is Aphrodite.
Naturally, when a new kind of femininity appears on the stage of evolution, Aphrodite, goddess of the old femininity, is going to be irate.
She is beyond morality.
She is before the time of morality.
She will use any means at her disposal to down an opponent.
She is, in fact, a thorough bitch.
Every woman knows this through her own sudden regressions to her Aphrodite nature.
A woman is a terrifying figure when she falls into it.
Every male around her trembles, for men are terrified of Aphrodite.
It is a calmer household where someone can gently say, Now look, sweet, remember Aphrodite?
Yet Aphrodite is a valuable person.
She is that basic, instinctive motherhood necessary for reproduction of the species.
As time goes on, we will see that she does not crush Psyche.
On the contrary, she does all that is right to make Psyche grow, ugh she is so unpleasant about it one does not feel like giving her a great deal of credit.
One of the beautiful things about the structure of the unconscious in human personality is that when it is time for growth, the old ways—the old habits—pave the way and welcome the new.
They seem to persecute the new growth at every point, but who knows—perhaps that is the correct way to bring a new consciousness to birth. ~Robert A. Johnson, SHE: Understanding the Feminine Psychology, Page 1-8
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