The Feminine Mystique (59 page)

9.
See Richard E. Gordon and Katherine K. Gordon, “Social Factors in the Prediction and Treatment of Emotional Disorders of Pregnancy,”
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
, 1959, 77:5, pp. 1074–1083; also Richard E. Gordon and Katherine K. Gordon, “Psychiatric Problems of a Rapidly Growing Suburb,”
American Medical Association Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry
, 1958, Vol. 79; “Psychosomatic Problems of a Rapidly Growing Suburb,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
, 1959, 170:15; and “Social Psychiatry of a Mobile Suburb,”
International Journal of Social Psychiatry
, 1960, 6:1, 2, pp. 89–99. Some of these findings were popularized in the composite case histories of
The Split Level Trap
, written by the Gordons in collaboration with Max Gunther (New York, 1960).

10.
Richard E. Gordon, “Sociodynamics and Psychotherapy,”
A.M.A. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry
, April, 1959, Vol. 81, pp. 486–503.

11.
Adelaide M. Johnson and S. A. Szurels, “The Genesis of Antisocial Acting Out in Children and Adults,”
Psychoanalytic Quarterly
, 1952, 21:323–343.

12.
Ibid
.

13.
Beata Rank, “Adaptation of the Psychoanalytical Technique for the Treatment of Young Children with Atypical Development,”
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
, XIX, 1, January, 1949.

14.
Ibid
.

15.
Ibid
.

16.
Beata Rank, Marian C. Putnam, and Gregory Rochlin, M.D., “The Significance of the ‘Emotional Climate' in Early Feeding Difficulties,”
Psychosomatic Medicine
, X, 5, October, 1948.

17.
Richard E. Gordon and Katherine K. Gordon, “Social Psychiatry of a Mobile Suburb,”
op. cit
., pp. 89–100.

18.
Ibid
.

19.
Oscar Sternbach, “Sex Without Love and Marriage Without Responsibility,” an address presented at the 38th Annual Conference of The Child Study Association of America, March 12, 1962, New York City (mimeo ms.).

20.
Bruno Bettelheim,
The Informed Heart—Autonomy in a Mass Age
, Glencoe, Ill., 1960.

21.
Ibid
., pp. 162–169.

22.
Ibid
., p. 231.

23.
Ibid
., pp. 233 ff.

24.
Ibid
., p. 265.

Chapter 13. THE FORFEITED SELF

1.
Rollo May, “The Origins and Significance of the Existential Movement in Psychology,” in
Existence, A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology
, Rollo May, Ernest Angel and Henri F. Ellenberger, eds., New York, 1958, pp. 30 ff. (See also Erich Fromm,
Escape from Freedom
, pp. 269 ff.; A. H. Maslow,
Motivation and Personality
, New York, 1954; David Riesman,
The Lonely Crowd
.)

2.
Rollo May, “Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy,” in
Existence, A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology
, p. 87.

3.
Ibid
., p. 52.

4.
Ibid
., p. 53.

5.
Ibid
., pp. 59 ff.

6.
See Kurt Goldstein,
The Organism, A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived From Pathological Data on Man
, New York and Cincinnati, 1939; also
Abstract and Concrete Behavior
, Evanston, Ill., 1950;
Case of Idiot Savant
(with Martin Scheerer), Evanston, 1945;
Human Nature in the Light of Psychopathology
, Cambridge, 1947;
After-Effects of Brain Injuries in War
, New York, 1942.

7.
Eugene Minkowski, “Findings in a Case of Schizophrenic Depression,” in
Existence, A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology
, pp. 132 ff.

8.
O. Hobart Mowrer, “Time as a Determinant in Integrative Learning,” in
Learning Theory and Personality Dynamics
, New York, 1950.

9.
Eugene Minkowski,
op. cit
., pp. 133–138:

We think and act and desire beyond that death which, even so, we could not escape. The very existence of such phenomena as the desire to do something for future generations clearly indicates our attitude in this regard. In our patient, it was this propulsion toward the future which seemed to be totally lacking. . . . In this personal impetus, there is an element of expansion; we go beyond the limits of our own ego and leave a personal imprint on the world about us, creating works which sever themselves from us to live their own lives. This accompanies a specific, positive feeling which we call contentment—that pleasure which accompanies every finished action or firm decision. As a feeling, it is unique. . . . Our entire individual evolution consists in trying to surpass that which has already been done. When our mental life dims, the future closes in front of us . . .

10.
Rollo May, “Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy,” pp. 31 ff. In Nietz-sche's philosophy, human individuality and dignity are “given or assigned to us as a task which we ourselves must solve”; in Tillich's philosophy, if you do not have the “courage to be,” you lose your own being; in Sartre's, you
are
your choices.

11.
A. H. Maslow,
Motivation and Personality
, p. 83.

12.
A. H. Maslow, “Some Basic Propositions of Holistic-Dynamic Psychology,” an unpublished paper, Brandeis University.

13.
Ibid
.

14.
A. H. Maslow, “Dominance, Personality and Social Behavior in Women,”
Journal of Social Psychology
, 1939, Vol. 10, pp. 3–39; and “Self Esteem (Dominance-Feeling) and Sexuality in Women,”
Journal of Social Psychology
, 1942, Vol. 16, pp. 259–294.

15.
A. H. Maslow, “Dominance, Personality and Social Behavior in Women,”
op. cit
., pp. 3–11.

16.
Ibid
., pp. 13 ff.

17.
Ibid
., p. 180.

18.
A. H. Maslow, “Self-Esteem (Dominance-Feeling) and Sexuality in Women,” p. 288. Maslow points out, however, that women with “ego insecurity” pretended a “self-esteem” they did not actually have. Such women had to “dominate,” in the ordinary sense, in their sexual relations, to compensate for their “ego insecurity”; thus, they were either castrative or masochistic. As I have pointed out, such women must have been very common in a society which gives women little chance for true self-esteem; this was undoubtedly the basis of the man-eating myth, and of Freud's equation of femininity with castrative penis envy and/or masochistic passivity.

19.
A. H. Maslow,
Motivation and Personality
, pp. 200 ff.

20.
Ibid
., pp. 211 ff.

21.
Ibid
., p. 214.

22.
Ibid
., pp. 242 ff.

23.
Ibid
., pp. 257 ff. Maslow found that his self-actualizing people “have in unusual measure the rare ability to be pleased rather than threatened by the partner's triumphs. . . . A most impressive example of this respect is the ungrudging pride of such a man in his wife's achievements even where they outshine his.” (
Ibid
., p. 252).

24.
Ibid
., p. 245.

25.
Ibid
., p. 255.

26.
A. C. Kinsey,
et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
, pp. 356 ff.; Table 97, p. 397; Table 104, p. 403.

Decade of Birth vs. Percentage of
Marital Coitus Leading to Orgasm

27.
Ibid
., p. 355.

28.
See Judson T. Landis, “The Women Kinsey Studied,” George Simpson, “Nonsense about Women,” and A. H. Maslow and James M. Sakoda, “Volunteer Error in the Kinsey Study,” in
Sexual Behavior in American Society
.

29.
Ernest W. Burgess and Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr.,
Predicting Success or Failure in Marriage
, New York, 1939, p. 271.

30.
A. C. Kinsey,
et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
, p. 403.

31.
Sylvan Keiser, “Body Ego During Orgasm,”
Psychoanalytic Quarterly
, 1952, Vol. XXI, pp. 153–166:

Individuals of this group are characterized by failure to develop adequate egos. . . . Their anxious devotion to, and lavish care of, their bodies belies the inner feelings of hollowness and inadequacy. . . . These patients have little sense of their own identity and are always ready to take on the personality of someone else. They have few personal convictions, and yield readily to the opinions of others. . . . It is chiefly among such patients that coitus can be enjoyed only up to the point of orgasm. . . . They dared not allow themselves uninhibited progression to orgasm with its concomitant loss of control, loss of awareness of the body, or death. . . . In instances of uncertainty about the structure and boundaries of the body image, one might say that the skin does not serve as an envelope which sharply defines the transition from the self to the environment; the one gradually merges into the other; there is no assurance of being a distinct entity endowed with the strength to give of itself without endangering one's own integrity.

32.
Lawrence Kubie, “Psychiatric Implications of the Kinsey Report,” in
Sexual Behavior in American Society
, pp. 270 ff:

This simple biologic aim is overlaid by many subtle goals of which the individual himself is usually unaware. Some of these are attainable; some are not. Where the majority are attainable, then the end result of sexual activity is an afterglow of peaceful completion and satisfaction. Where, however, the unconscious goals are unattainable, then whether orgasm has occurred or not, there remains a post-coital state of unsated need, and sometimes of fear, rage or depression.

33.
Erik H. Erikson,
Childhood and Society
, pp. 239–283, 367–380. See also Erich Fromm,
Escape from Freedom
and
Man for Himself
; and David Riesman,
The Lonely Crowd
.

34.
See Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein (
Women's Two Roles
), who point out that the number of American women now working outside the home seems greater than it is because the base from which the comparison is usually made was unusually small: a century ago the proportion of American women working outside the home was far smaller than in the European countries. In other words, the woman problem in America was probably unusually severe because the displacement of American women from essential work and identity in society was far more drastic—primarily because of the extremely rapid growth and industrialization of the American economy. The women who had grown with the men in the frontier days were banished almost overnight to
anomie
—which is a very expressive sociological name for that sense of non-existence or non-identity suffered by one who has no real place in society—when the important work left the home, where they stayed. In contrast, in France where industrialization was slower, and farms and small family-size shops are still fairly important in the economy, women a century ago still worked in large numbers—in field and shop—and today the majority of French women are not full-time housewives in the American sense of the mystique, for an enormous number still work in the fields, in addition to that one out of three who, as in America, work in industry, sales, offices, and professions. The growth of women in France has much more closely paralleled the growth of the society, since the proportion of French women in the professions has doubled in fifty years. It is interesting to note that the feminine mystique does not prevail in France, to the extent that it does here; there is a legitimate image in France of a feminine career woman and feminine intellectual, and French men seem responsive to women sexually, without equating femininity either with glorified emptiness or that man-eating castrative mom. Nor has the family been weakened—in actuality or mystique—by women's work in industry and profession. Myrdal and Klein show that the French career women continue to have children—but not the great number the new educated American housewives produce.