“It is more difficult for a woman to recognize the separateness of a loved one”

“If a boy has a clear and visible difference from a girl — a penis, then for a girl her vagina at the surface levels of the unconscious is associated with images of a wound, the absence of a penis, which leads to a frequent feeling of inferiority and inferiority of women in comparison with men. At the same time, at deeper levels of the unconscious, the vagina is an opening, an entrance to something secret, deep, hidden. Unlike the visible power of a man, the power of a woman lies precisely in this invisible secret, in a cave with countless treasures that sometimes become visible — with the appearance of a child or a passionate female orgasm. The very anatomical «construction» of the vagina is well known, but in the psychic sense it is as infinite as the cosmos, and we project onto it (literally into it) both the most desirable and the most threatening.

• Do you hear the signals of the unconscious?

The difference between a boy and his mother is obvious — and therefore it is easier for a boy to get out of the chaos of the unconscious and form his own “I” separate from his mother. He has a visible masculine attribute that women do not have. The girl, on the other hand, does not physically differ from her mother, and the conflict between the desire to separate and the desire to merge with her mother determines a lot in the development of a woman. Assigning the secret of the vagina and its treasures is the most important task for the mental development of any woman. If the daughter cannot psychically take her away from her mother, then she may be doomed to either give up femininity or acquire narcissistic non-sexual femininity. In the latter case, a woman at any age strives not for a relationship with a man, but for an attempt to become that very ideally beautiful, eternally young goddess woman, whose image is imprinted in the soul of a child looking at her mother.

It is more difficult for a woman to recognize the separateness of a loved one. Her unconscious is more blurred in terms of the «Self-Other» distinction, often lacking boundaries. In this sense, it is easier for a woman to bear a child than to bear the separateness of the Other (child, husband). She has to do more inner work than men in order to find these boundaries, to love another, recognizing his separateness.

• The impulse to work with the unconscious is the desire to see the source of one’s suffering.

Thanks to the vagina, a woman can feel omnipotent, as she is filled with higher gifts. However, the very moment of the birth of a child is not only the acquisition of a gift, but also a colossal loss: it ceases to belong entirely to her, and this gift will need to be shared with others. And the woman after childbirth again, already mentally, captures the child. He no longer becomes a physical, but a mental part of the mother. This is due to evolution, so that the mother can feel the needs of the child, feel his needs as her own and satisfy them. She, in fact, takes the child back into herself. The secret of the birth of a child, the subsequent re-merging with him, and the transformation for him into a good divine universe is, without a doubt, the subject of deep unconscious envy of men towards women.

But at the next stage of development, everything changes. Mother can turn into a black hole that threatens to swallow us completely. She may strive to keep the child in her indefinitely, and even the father is not always able to intervene. This moment, associated with the power of absorption, is also a characteristic of the female unconscious. The feminine principle is considered to be more passive, but this is a big misconception. The power of absorption is very active and great. It both attracts and frightens men in women. The childish part of a man would very much like to be back in the good maternal universe, in the lost paradise. It seems to him that, possessing a woman, he will be able to possess the secret of her vagina, her orgasm, her inner cosmos of the unconscious, which is unattainable for a man in principle. He can only share this secret with a woman, merging with a woman at the moment of orgasm, identifying himself with her in the process of childbirth or through the female side of his own psyche.