Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2139

Extensive pencil quotes, in a small, black pocket-size notebook containing dates 1935-1936, from M. Esther Harding (a collaborator of Carl Jung), The Way of All Women.

 

White envelope has items 2139-2158.

 

 

5/  “When the gains from carrying the image of the man’s unconscious values and from associating with the man who thus glorifies her.

 

 “The feminine soul of the man anima (Jung)

 

 “When his soul is projected to another human being it is as though half of himself were in her. The woman becomes enormously important as well as enormously attractive to him. He longs to get into relations with her that he may come into relation with his own soul, otherwise lost to him.

 

  “The ego trend /?/ poisons, as it were, the purity of the girl’s motives in any situation.

 

 “Doomed to be a child all her days .. after 40 a mummy of a child.

 

 “On account of their own contact with the deeper things within them such women can lead a man she loves into touch with the hidden truths of life. She could not write the book etc; she can open the gates for him. She gives of herself. Redeemed from her biological instincts and from self-seeking egotism.

 

 “From his femme inspiratrice he gains the inspiration to create. This creation is the child of his love. But the relationship is the child of her love, her ‘creation.’

 

Quoted only to here. July 19, 1936

 

 Read page 36  spiritual quality of a man’s love … experience of deep spiritual significance, holding for him the possibility of development through the integration of parts of his psyche which were previously unrealized.

 

 

 “Assimilation of the values of the Ghostly Lover — anima or animus.

 

82/  “Animus identified” In love with one’s ego. Women as such

 

 See p. 84. ___________ of masculine virtues. Her justice becomes ___________ her courage will extend to martyrizing herself. (88)   (227)

 

227/  “Sensual love is a spark of the divine fire implanted in man through which he may find his way to heaven and be identified for the moment with the gods.

 

235/  “Sexuality is not merely a means for propagation and satisfaction of the generative impulse; it has been appropriated to the service of the emotional and psychological life. It has become the most intimate expression of love, of relatedness between two human beings.

 

241/  “The lovers have to decide.” No sweeping generalization can be made.

 

245/  Love is by no means entirely under the personal or conscious control of the individual.

 

252/  The independent unmarried woman nearing middle life.

 

 “Her standard is her own concern.”  “A woman who marries young does not know anything of the burden which years of unfulfilled instinct, long years of unbroken chastity, bring. “..abstinence usually implies also the repression of love.

 

 “A deeply buried sense of inferiority and unfulfillment usually haunts the woman who has not given her love to any human being. She seeks to compensate for her feeling of inadequacy in love with achievements in the world hoping that the recognition that she will receive will compensate for the love she has missed. She therefore augments the importance of her work and uses it to increase her own sense of importance and convince herself that her life is worthwhile. This compulsive devotion gives her work drive, but also tinges it with a partisan quality which is bound to arouse opposition and distrust increasing in turn the barrier between the woman and any possible love experience. The attempt to meet the problem of sexual repression by work only accentuates the difficulties of her situation.

 

 In the present day a very considerable and probably increasing number of women meet this problem by accepting love and the sexual relation, even though they are not married.  . . . .

 

 An association of this character is governed by the laws of the feminine principle. There is no obligation on the part of the woman to perform duties or accede to demands or tolerate approaches not in accordance with her own desire.