Must read for the philosophically inclined

[Zukiteru]

The Way of All Women discusses topics such as work, marriage, motherhood, old age, and women's relationships with family, friends, and lovers. Dr. Harding, who was best known for her work with women and families, stresses the need for a woman to work toward her own wholeness and develop the many sides of her nature, and emphasizes the importance of unconscious processes.

Here are some excerpts from it that I found profound,

"Rarely is a woman brave enough to lay aside all ulterior motives and react as woman to man, directly from her own feeling."

"Sexuality for a woman is more closely linked with her feelings; it is more intimately a part of herself than it is for a man. So it follows that separating herself from her own sexuality and treating it as something apart from herself—an unimportant action indulged in for the stimulus and pleasure of the moment only—results in a hardness which is peculiarly destructive to the girl’s values. For a boy to take this attitude is also extremely regrettable, but it does not seem to destroy his specifically masculine values in the same way that it destroys the feminine values of the girl.

After such a disillusioning experience, a girl may well lose her sense of the sacredness of love. She feels that sexuality does not mean much either way, but since men want it, why refuse, if by acquiescing she gains and holds their attention. Through such an attitude she inevitably loses touch completely with the deeper side of her own nature. Sexuality can never be trivial to a woman who is in touch with the feminine principle, the Eros, within. Only by repressing and disregarding her emotions can she accept the embrace of a man who does not profoundly stir her, and if she does accept it, she no longer functions as a woman, but takes her sexuality in masculine fashion. The majority of girls, however, who have fallen into this way of acting are really entirely un-awakened—their emotions are sleeping. Young men are, as a rule, more aware of their own instincts, more mature in physical sexuality than girls of the same age, even though they are as unconscious emotionally. Indeed, the man’s physical intensity is often a complete mystery to the girl. “Men put so much energy into lovemaking,” a girl once said to me, “I can’t think how they do it—they are so intense about it. I only wish they would be quick and get through, so that we can attend to something more interesting.”

A girl who allows herself to be guided in this way by the man’s desire loses touch more and more with herself. Perhaps she yielded at first to an idea of what would bring her happiness. She was disillusioned by the event. She thought that she had experienced all that life had to offer in that field. ‘The novelists were wrong, there was nothing much to it. But,” her reflections would continue, “if that is all there is to life why wait for something more satisfactory, better exploit it for all it is worth.” With such an attitude a girl readily goes from petting to promiscuity, and by the time she reaches twenty, she may well be completely disillusioned, completely bored with life. She has run through the gamut of sensations—what more has life to offer!"

"If the woman is unduly sensitive about her appearance possibly the truth is that unconsciously she expects to be perfect and so cannot accept herself as an ordinary human being with faults and weaknesses like the rest of humanity. A fantasy of being a princess often lurks under such a sense of inadequacy. In her own unrecognized opinion of herself she is all-perfect and all-admired, perhaps still papa’s little darling. If through her husband’s challenge of her attitude, she discovers in her unconscious this kind of “perfection fantasy” with its accompanying demand that he admire her under all circumstances, the problem resolves itself again into the need to “assimilate the evil,” and recognize herself as the ordinary human being that she is."

"...There is no judge competent to decide for them, for this whole problem is part of a cultural movement whose final outcome lies obscured in the future. It is so complex, so individual, and the state of morality today is so chaotic that no sweeping generalization can possibly cover the whole case. One fact, however, remains as true today as ever: if an individual’s attitude toward his own actions is trivial, he reduces his experience of his personal life to a trivial level and he becomes disillusioned and indifferent. To take life solely on the pleasure principle leads inevitably to satiety and boredom. Man is not just a pleasure-seeking—that is, a degenerate—animal; he is also a living spirit and can find satisfaction in life only through the devotion of all his powers to some end beyond his own personal pleasure. This end beyond themselves is, for young people as for others, to be found through taking their love more, not less, seriously."

"A woman falls in love; she is enthusiastic over the man; her emotions are strongly aroused; there is no doubt that mighty forces are brought into play. But the odd thing is that nothing happens; the situation always falls flat. The man may be intrigued for a little while; he is certainly flattered, and he may even take advantage of the woman’s involvement with him. But sooner or later disillusion creeps in; the spell is broken, the glamor gone; the beloved becomes only ordinary man. A few weeks, or perhaps only a few days, elapse, and the process begins all over again. Another man looms on the woman’s horizon and becomes the hero of the hour. Again the woman is aglow with the re-emergence of her animus values. It may be that this episode will be more satisfactory, that more of reality will be brought into it and that the affair will last a little longer, but it is foredoomed to failure. Sooner or later it will be replaced by another similar projection.

Such a woman seems to be bound to the wheel which drags her through an endless series of projections, bound on it by one of the greatest laws of her being—the necessity to seek her own soul, her animus. But it is her fate to see him only as a projection upon one man after another. She loves him in one man, but she soon discovers she has been deceived, for the man and her animus are not the same thing. She loves him in another, lives through a brief period of illusion and awakens again. This time she metaphorically rubs her eyes and looks around, only to see her animus masquerading in the person of another man. Disillusion gives place to illusion and the whole experience is repeated. She realizes that this sort of thing leads nowhere, that she is following a chimera—the Ghostly Lover who lures his victim away from life and reality."

There are many more I could have included but you'd likely just be better of reading it with how much valuable information it provides, not just on women, but also the relation of man to them.

 

[Truebloatcel]

Mirin the effort but I couldn't care less about foids

 

[psychopathic]

Mirin the effort but I couldn't care less about foids

Your entire life revolves around them quit tryna act like some redpilled guru.

 

[Truebloatcel]

Your entire life revolves around them quit tryna act like some redpilled guru.

Not really tbh everything I did to my looks was mainly for friendships and so people will treat me like a normal person

 

[Roara]

can you TLDR on the paragraph's points?
"The man may be intrigued for a little while; he is certainly flattered"
this is uselessly adding more words, as far as IK

 

[ICL]

Mirin the effort but I couldn't care less about foids

Thats the only reason you're here

 

[CloudyCuck]

I hate foids

 

[Zukiteru]

can you TLDR on the paragraph's points?
"The man may be intrigued for a little while; he is certainly flattered"
this is uselessly adding more words, as far as IK

1930s English is definitely a lot more convoluted than the English of today

TLDR for that excerpt is that women have a projection, identified as the "ghostly lover," that leads them to project a group of traits (think good guy that can do no wrong, aka the hero) onto the man that are grounded in fantasy. As such overtime as she gets to know him and the actual traits he possesses she eventually finds that her projection was entirely incorrect and he possesses no such traits, or very few of them.

A practical example of this may be a women in a relationship who is asked by a interviewer who her celebrity crush is, she answers—likely with great enthusiasm—and as such projects these traits onto the celebrity. If asked about who she would pick between the celebrity and the guy who she is currently in a relationship with, she is extremely likely to pick the celebrity.

The issue at hand is that she makes no conscious effort to understand why she continually finds each guy she initially likes boring and dull after some time, and in doing so is forever set up for disappointment.

The framework offered by Jungian psychology would say that she believes the traits she seeks out to only exist in that of the man, and not within that of herself. When in reality they simply reside in her unconsciousness and it is her job to try and make them conscious through whatever means are best suited for her be it through a conscious man, a therapist, or what have you.