This book is an invaluable key to self-understanding. Using examples from her own life and the lives of her clients, as well as from dreams, fairy tales, myths, films, and literature, Linda Schierse Leonard, a Jungian analyst, exposes the wound of the spirit that both men and women of our culture bear—a wound that is grounded in a poor relationship between masculine and feminine principles. Leonard speculates that when a father is wounded in his own psychological development, he is not able to give his daughter the care and guidance she needs. Inheriting this wound, she may find that her ability to express herself professionally, intellectually, sexually, and socially is impaired. On a broader scale, Leonard discusses how women compensate for cultural devaluation, resorting to passive submission (“the Eternal Girl”), or a defensive imitation of the masculine (“the Armored Amazon”). The Wounded Woman shows that by understanding the father-daughter wound and working to transform it psychologically, it is possible to achieve a fruitful, caring relationship between men and women, between fathers and daughters, a relationship that honors both the mutuality and the uniqueness of the sexes.
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Linda Schierse Leonard. The Wounded Woman
THE WOUNDED WOMAN
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE. A WOUNDED DAUGHTER
I. THE WOUNDING
CHAPTER ONE. THE FATHER-DAUGHTER WOUND
CHAPTER TWO. SACRIFICE OF THE DAUGHTER
CHAPTER THREE. THE ETERNAL GIRL
CHAPTER FOUR. THE ARMORED AMAZON
CHAPTER FIVE. THE MAN WITHIN
II. THE HURTING
CHAPTER SIX. RAGE
CHAPTER SEVEN. TEARS
III. THE HEALING
CHAPTER EIGHT. FEMININE FACETS
CHAPTER NINE. REDEEMING THE FATHER
CHAPTER TEN. FINDING FEMININE SPIRIT
NOTES
Отрывок из книги
Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship
Linda Schierse Leonard
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In later life the daughters of these domineering old men often find themselves cut off from an easy relation to their own feminine instincts, since their own fathers could not truly acknowledge their femininity. Since these women experienced strictness and harshness from their fathers, they are likely to be hard either on themselves or others. Even if they rebel, one often feels in that rebellion something relentless and sharp. Some daughters knuckle under to the authoritarian rule and never live their own lives. Others, though they may rebel, stay bound to their father’s control, living always in reaction to him. These daughters, too, like those of the more indulgent fathers, tend to be cut off from a healthy relationship to men and to their own creative spirit.
So far, I have described two extreme tendencies that may exist in a father’s relationship to his daughter. But most fathers are a mixture of the two. And even if a father has lived out his life in only one of these two extremes, he often acts out the other extreme unconsciously.7 There are many examples of rigidly authoritarian fathers who suddenly fly into irrational, emotional outbursts which threaten all the security and order they have established, instilling a terrible fear of chaos in their daughters. Since the feeling realm is not consciously acknowledged by the father, but instead seems to overwhelm him from time to time, it seems all the more threatening to his children. Sometimes these rages have sexual overtones as well—for example, the father who physically punishes a disobedient daughter in such a way that she becomes threatened on the sexual level. So, while the father’s conscious emphasis may be on duty, rationally toeing the line, in the background may be puerile moods and impulses which pop out unconsciously at unexpected moments. In the same way, indulgent fathers are likely to have in the background of their lives the sneering cynicism of the rigid judge. Such a father may suddenly turn on his daughter, criticizing her for those impulsive qualities he dislikes in himself.
