International Women’s Day is a direct opportunity to talk with the author of the international bestseller “How Women Love,” psychologist Maryse Vaillant. Her conclusions are disconcerting: today, women still seek to remain in the shadow of men, and political power prefers power at home. Why?
Mariz Vian (Maryse Vaillant) is a French clinical psychologist and parenting specialist who has written numerous books, most recently Comment aiment les femmes (Seuil, 2006).
Psychologies: How different is the modern woman from her predecessors?
Mariz Vian: Not as much as we would like. Of course, at first glance, today in her life, much looks different, because everything that concerns the two main hypostases of a person has incredibly changed – to create, produce something and reproduce oneself, one’s kind. The ability to control the process of conception has changed the woman’s sense of self, and her responsibility for the genealogy of her kind, and the nature of relationships with men. Today, when she herself can choose when she becomes a mother, being someone’s girlfriend or spouse means far from the same thing as before. But this freedom of choice is deceptive: the number of eggs in the female body has not increased: if you do not use them on time, it will be too late. The biological clock forces women to have children at an age when they want to create more than reproduce.
The other side of her fundamental change is her relationship with work. She has the right to study and receive diplomas, after which she seems to have the right to claim the appropriate job and level of responsibility, that is, equality with a man. But no! And these changes are deceptive: women are recruited differently, they are entrusted with the responsibilities of a lower social status (compared to men), and they have a different salary … In these two areas – with all the undeniable progress compared to the era of our mothers and grandmothers – the facts are stubbornly say that women are still not equal to men.
And how does this manifest itself in relationships within a couple?
M.V.: In love, more than in any other area of our lives, women do not behave as equals to men, as if at a deep level there is a certain asymmetry between us. Why do strong, independent, free women, who have all the intellectual and psychological capabilities to be equal to men, still reproduce archaic patterns of submission? What does it give them? What female pleasure is hidden here, since this patriarchal model is so effective and continues to operate? Are they victims of some external force, such as biology or men themselves?
I would venture to suggest that they were victims of the elements that originate in themselves. In love relationships, a woman most often turns out to be vulnerable: she expects from a man that he will literally fill her with happiness, giving all the love of the world. In other words, she expects from him what a little girl expects from her father. A woman imagines a man strong and powerful, possessing everything that every man passionately desires, namely phallic, family and social power, on which the harmony of her life was based in childhood. At the family hearth, she, trying to imitate her mother, gives a man a grateful and trusting love, promising unlimited possibilities and unlimited freedom. But if this oedipal idealization of the father does not subside with the onset of adolescence, the woman runs the risk of transferring these feelings to the man in her life, expecting him to finally make a “real woman” out of her.
Do you want to say that in love we act according to the same pattern as our mothers and grandmothers?
M.V.: Yes. Despite the evolution of society, the logic by which love relationships are built still, it seems to me, corresponds to the schemes described by Freud in the XNUMXth century. A man-father, “an exemplary head of the family”, who enjoys authority in society, the indestructible support of the family institution, the bearer of the family name and the guardian of family honor, politically and professionally active, and in economic terms – the only breadwinner of his wife and children. A woman is a spouse and “mother of the family”, prolific and subordinate, not involved in politics. From the hands of her father, she falls under the protection of her husband, who from that moment will manage her property and the organization of her life. This patriarchal model also makes it possible to explain the behavior of modern women in love.
It seems that the image of the father, this exaggerated model of male power, continues to operate. Very often, the desire for self-realization of women, their life quests still necessarily involve a man. It can be a father, son, husband, boss – the one who has power. Women’s weapons have long been known – to seduce, dominate, submit and conquer. Of course, to our great happiness, this does not apply to everyone. But even today, the vast majority of women live that way.
Does it bother you as a woman, a psychologist and a feminist, that we are still within the framework of the Freudian coordinate system, where a woman is defined as a non-man?
M.V.: For many years I was annoyed by his idea of the absence, the lack of a phallic principle in a woman. Since a person is always formed in the conditions of a lack of something, every person – both men and women – is faced with this feeling. However, Freud formulated what, as it turns out, remains true today. We can dream of a different world order, but the reality is that the organ that distinguishes us from each other, this piece of flesh, which some have and others do not, changes everything.
However, arguments about the role of the phallic principle irritate me much less than the so-called female weakness and fragility. Women have two incomparable sources of power compared to men: the ability to give birth and the ability to experience multiple orgasms. Their wisdom was manifested in the fact that they were able to highlight their imaginary weakness in order to derive enormous benefit from it: they compensate for the lack of apparent power at the expense of psychological pleasure. They do not rule by themselves, but indirectly, through a man, spouse, boss or son.
Is it possible to say that masochism* is inherent in women in relationships with men?
M.V.: Narcissism, the narcissism of women who never feel either beautiful enough or young enough, but whom men love for who they are, plays an important role in the psychological pleasure that unconsciously drives women to submit to men. Some of them fall into a trap as a result: seduction becomes their destiny, because the pleasure they get from seducing surpasses all other pleasures. Another higher pleasure is given to them by masochism, which makes many women keep in the shadow of a man, serve and succumb to him, in order to subjugate him and subdue him in this way.
Although on the surface it seems that women are “hushed”, is it really about seizing power?
M.V.: Exactly. And absolute power. They control a man or put him on a pedestal so that it would be more convenient for them to reproach him when he falls from him … Women’s weapons are complaints and reproaches. Such masochism allows a woman to experience insane pleasure, because a man as an “other” simply disappears: no matter what his virtues and abilities are, no matter what he is, the main thing is how a woman will dispose of it. Some of them take more pleasure in staying in the shadows and quietly pulling the strings than in taking their rightful place in the circle of light.
Many women live according to three psychological schemes: the power of beauty balances the power of money; the mother’s power over her children compensates for her professional vulnerability; submitting to and serving a man, a woman thereby gains power over him. These schemes are very stable, and besides, they give women so much satisfaction (as well as men, who also benefit from them) that they will last for a very long time. And those women who are free from these schemes and do not strive for unconscious power over men, one way or another pay for it. More often than not, they are lonely.
If a woman does not meet the generally accepted criteria of femininity – seduction, fragility, sensitivity, motherhood – then there will be few lovers of her special kind of beauty. This is also true for those who openly demonstrate their intellectual power or lust for power. As for those women who have passed their childbearing age and therefore have become “invisible” to the male eye, they are well aware of the price paid by those who cease to conform to the image of eternal femininity replicated by the media.
It seems that love in a relationship you take a very small place?
M.V.: Not at all. Women who cherish powerful men, like those who dedicate themselves to their son, boss or husband, can truly love them. Love is a mixture of the idealization of a partner, the need to dominate him, sexual desire, possession, self-giving … But I cannot but take into account the strongest psychological satisfaction behind all this. It acts as an unconscious opposition to social attitudes. Look, for example, how many women around us are with higher education (and more than one), smart and independent, who give up their careers for the sake of raising children. Society does not economically need women’s labor and is ready to “return” them to their traditional place, to the stove and children. Some women unconsciously go for it and at the same time not only do not suffer from such a situation, but also find confirmation of their deepest desires in it – and in this way they realize themselves.
It turns out that the persistent struggle of feminists for equality did not help women overcome traditional patterns of behavior?
M.V.: Unfortunately, this is so. It is impossible to depart from habitual schemes by means of collective struggle; every woman must make her own path, make her own choice. The influence of the patriarchal way of life is so strong that you have to go through it in order to get rid of it.
Hidden matriarchy has always existed: thousands of women ruled over their husbands and children in their family. There has always been the power of women hiding behind men; there have always been pipe-smoking women who emancipated themselves in this way, freeing themselves from the pressure of public morality … Today, some young women lead a very uninhibited sex life and choose their own men. But, although the methods of pairing have changed, the goal remains the same! We still remain within the framework of the archetypal model of relations between men and women. The lack of weight in politics is compensated by the predominance in the family, and this has been happening for centuries. As long as women carry children, nothing will change. But if an artificial womb is ever created, in front of which men and women are equal, then a completely new humanity will arise.
* Sexual satisfaction with physical or moral suffering caused by a sexual partner.