Sublime

In my work with people in the helping professions, I have often been confronted with a childhood history that seems significant to me. • There was a mother* who at the core was emotionally insecure and who depended for her equilibrium on her child’s behaving in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurity from her child and from ev

The concept of this individualized soul-image has a long, complicated history; its appearance in cultures is diverse and widespread and the names for it are legion. Only our contemporary psychology and psychiatry omit it from their textbooks. The study and therapy of the psyche in our society ignore this factor, which other cultures regard as the k

The answer is an unequivocal yes. So why, if this is all so and too true, do women keep trying to bend and fold themselves into shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from years of clinical observation of this problem, that most of the time it is not because of deep-seated masochism or a malignant dedication to self-destruction or anything of that

When he did express his concerns, they were dismissed as his “male midlife crisis.” Essentially, though, women’s liberation and the male midlife crisis were the same search—for personal fulfillment, common values, mutual respect, love. But while women’s liberation was thought of as promoting identity, the male midlife crisis was thought of as an id

A woman’s issues of soul cannot be treated by carving her into a more acceptable form as defined by an unconscious culture, nor can she be bent into a more intellectually acceptable shape by those who claim to be the sole bearers of consciousness. No, that is what has already caused millions of women who began as strong and natural powers to become

the ultimate father’s daughter, deeply identified with patriarchal values like reason, strength, and victory.