As a woman, I find that reading a book by a man takes more energy than reading a book by a woman. In the latter case, writer and reader start right off with the same worldview.
I’ve excused this presumptive attitude of mine by telling myself, “I can learn more from a woman.”
So why do I often feel like an outside observer in a man’s book?
Let’s begin with the woman’s book. My mother gave me a copy of Colette’s The Blue Lantern when I was 23. I used to wish I’d had a French mother (mine was Hungarian) so she could teach me women’s secrets about fashion, flirting and je ne sais quoi. But just this minute I’ve realized that since my (real) mother introduced me to Colette, my wish did come true.
Colette’s French woman is: her confident true self, unafraid to be inventive and responsive, and open to the natural world. She’s Gigi, she’s Lea, she’s Sido. She’s Colette.
I read her books to find something of myself in each of these women.
To get back to my author problem. I was reading Modern Man in Search of a Soul for insight from the early 20th century Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung. The book’s title seemed to speak to Americans in 2022. Maybe Jung could tell me how to find my soul in times like these.
But page 87 stopped me short. I realized Jung had not been talking about modern mankind as I had assumed, but about modern man.
As a woman, I felt disqualified. Here’s why.
In the passage below, Jung has just said that the infant science of psychology fails because its mental-type theory cannot embrace the great variety of people on earth. Agreed.
But the Professor insists on teaching it anyway. So Jung confronts him with three examples of outlying “mental types”.
I cannot refrain from confronting the Professor of Psychology with the mentality of women, of the Chinese, and of Australian Negroes. Our psychology must embrace all life, otherwise we simply remain enclosed in the Middle Ages.
Note “…the mentality of women…” in this odd list. I put the book back on the shelf, wondering if Jung thought that a woman had a soul to be in search of.
WOW! Lots to talk about on this one.
Jung and the rest, must have never found what they were looking for by
not including woman. The Soul, to me, is ALL Inclusive. Simple and true.
Men have always had the advantage of education and being published. Even in art etc.. Getting better now. Women doing most jobs a man can do and more excepted. Not totally
About reading men or women. In these days, do you think it's different with the people changing their SEX? Just a thought.
Didn't Jung and Freud love the same woman?
I do read more women, but some men. Maybe they're in touch with their feminine side??????
Having read, for the most part, only male authors until college, I decided at 22 to only read female authors until I reached parity! While I’ve relaxed that standard somewhat, it is a rarity for me to read a female character written by a male that seems authentic. Isn’t it funny (not) how The Great Books were all written by men?