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Book Summary by Linda Brown

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"We are so rich in things and so poor in feminine values!" -Robert A. Johnson (from Femininity Lost and Regained)

Robert A. Johnson is a Jungian analyst. The three books I am summarizing were read within the same time frame. All three contain much of the same information; therefore, I am first going to write generally about them, then deal with each book individually.

Depending upon one’s familiarity with the theories of Jung, the books can be read on many different levels. All three deal with the lack of the feminine in men’s lives and the resultant problems imposed upon men themselves and upon society as a whole.

By the feminine, Johnson is not talking about men having physical female characteristics. The feminine as he interprets it represents abstract qualities such as feelings, peace, art, beauty, and the emotional and inner aspects of a personality. Most men, instead of placing emphasis upon these qualities, tend to place it upon technology, possessions and strength.

They give up feelings for more practical things. Men strive to be the hero, addressing the wrongs of life to fight for what’s right. In a masculine world, things are catalogued. Men tend to think they slay the dragon through accomplishments, but that’s not true.

The real dragon battle is an interior one – it has nothing to do with brute force and fast cars. Feeling is what brings value, worth and meaning to man’s inner world of imagination and dreams.

Throughout history, the relationship of man to woman and to his own femininity has mostly been stereotyped and regulated by law, custom and convention.

The feminine part of a man is most often the least developed, yet this is the part he ignores, causing him to be unhappy, tense, moody and anxious - without knowing why.

There is prosperity in our lives, but life has lost its meaning. Our culture places emphasis on science, technological advancement, a high standard of living and rationality at the cost of happiness and contentment. If a man doesn’t have an equally high grasp of consciousness, his relationships will be unsuccessful.

Not that loss of femininity deals with man alone. But whether the feminine feeling side is being neglected in a man or woman, the result is much the same – feelings of isolation, discontent and moodiness.

Part of the reason Western man has difficulty expressing feelings is because he has a poverty stricken vocabulary. There are few words for love and matters of feeling in the English language. Other languages have many words for the different kinds of love. Sanskrit has 96; ancient Persian, 80.

All three of these books use myth as a way of exploring the loss of the feminine throughout the ages.

The dictionary defines myth as "a story or belief that attempts to explain a basic truth" and "a traditional or legendary story."

Jung perceives myth to be "an involuntary collective statement based on an unconscious psychic experience."

Johnson believes that a true myth, no matter how dark, will lead us out of the problem and prescribe a cure. The worst pain one can suffer is that which is self inflicted, being near something precious but being unable to experience it or accept it. An example is feelings.

If one looks at it like Johnson does, a myth is an inner story – a psychic map that guides the person toward consciousness. The greatest value of a myth is in its inner dimensions.

All myths represent interaction between archetypal figures and humans. They are about opposing forces at work, but they are also about fate, which is the interplay between people and the gods.

Fate is not in our hands, but how we proceed with it is. It is up to the people involved as to whether or not the story ends in a noble way. No matter what fate has in store, the story can end well if the feminine energies remain strong.

Lying With the Heavenly Woman

This book is about understanding the feminine archetypes and incorporating them in men’s lives. The book offers a couple of myths and deals with the different forms of femininity a man experiences.

They include the mother, the mother complex, the mother archetype, the anima, etc., all of which are noble elements of wisdom. Added together, they create relatedness in a man’s life.

The difficulty comes with being able to differentiate them. The feminine is difficult to differentiate because it resists form and order, yet lack of clarity in a man’s life brings problems, because not differentiating can lead to mid-life crisis, incest and even suicide. Learning to differentiate will enable the man to find meaning and fulfillment within himself and his relationships.

The role of females in a man’s dreams tells much about his relationship to well being and happiness. If the women are happy in his dreams, he is happy.

If they are angry or weak or disapproving, things will go badly in his life. A good relationship with these interior women makes for a good relationship with the exterior ones.

Probably the most important person in a man’s life is his mother, because while he is young he is totally dependent upon her. She is human and personal.

On the other hand, what Jung and Johnson refer to as the mother complex is not one’s actual mother, but is the regressive quality in a man, which longs to go back to a time when he can evade responsibility in his own life.

It can manifest in the form of depression or discouragement. Of all of the forms of femininity, in order for a man to be mentally and emotionally healthy, the mother complex should occupy the minority of his energy.

The difference in the mother and the mother complex is that the mother is real and human; the mother complex is interior, the part of him that wants to run away from issues, and ridding himself of the mother complex requires much inner work.

The Parsifal myth is about the mother complex. Parsifal is the hero of the story. After his father gets killed, the mother makes him a one-piece homespun garment. The homespun garment represents the mother complex in its symbolic form. Every young man wears his mother complex, yet it will defeat him if he wears it as his relationship to the world.

Parsifal had gone into the Grail Caste in his teens. He did not know the question that would have given him entrance to the castle any time he wanted. Twenty years later, after many life experiences, he gets another chance. The myth is about Parsifal turning his mother complex into the mother archetype.

In real life, dangerous pursuits are a disguise for a man’s mother complex. The wish to fail or die causes him to expose himself to danger through regressive experiences to win his battle over them. An example can be found in men who perform dangerous feats like driving cars too fast or climbing mountains.

Some men take refuge in institutions, such as belonging to clubs or becoming perpetual college students. The ultimate defeat by the mother complex is if a man commits suicide.

The mother archetype, on the other hand, is as beneficial to a young man as the mother complex is harmful. The task of every young man is to transform his mother complex into the mother archetype. He must do this before he can occupy a place in the adult world and especially before he can form any mature relationship.

In the Parsifal myth there is a sister who represents feminine reality because she is near Parsifal’s own age. She prepares him for the anima that is soon to arrive into his life. Affection and simplicity are found in his relationship to sister. She has much to do with his attitude toward life.

Carl Jung’s work deals very much with the anima – "the intermediary between the conscious personality of a man and the depths of his being, the collective unconscious." Dr. Jung named her this because she is what animates him and brings life into his world.

Other words for her include muse, guide, poetic voice, and inspiration. She is the mistress of man’s inner world. Man’s search for his anima explains the search for a soulmate. On an inner level, the anima represents his search for meaning in his life.

Men and women experience their anima and animus (the masculine qualities in the woman) differently, although both hunger for ecstasy and wholeness.

A man hungers for validation of his masculine world, for warmth and the approval of his beloved. He finds these things either from a real woman or from his own inner feminine nature. The anima is an interior experience because it is a soul quality. A man’s moods are his feminine side lived inwardly.

A woman needs from her man stability, protection, order, clarity and freedom.

Because of different needs is why men and women don’t understand each other better. Each needs what the other has; yet because of their differences, each wounds the other.

The loss of feminine in a woman affects her identity. The loss of feminine in a man affects his ability to feel and value.

The two great requirements in a man’s life are his wife and his interior anima.

Some men project anima onto inanimate objects, bestowing magical qualities to their cars, musical instruments, boats, etc.

Anima generally comes in double form in a man’s life, representing the light and dark sides. The light anima is idealistic and noble, while the dark anima is illicit and chaotic. The double anima causes much suffering in a man’s life.

An example of this is the breakup of a marriage due to a man’s extramarital affair. One solution is for the man to let his dark anima take the form of art or some other kind of creative endeavor rather than in ways that will hurt himself or others.

Lying with the Heavenly Woman is an African myth, where the heavenly anima and the mother archetype are often indistinguishable. This story portrays the double anima. A father warns his young son that one night the heavenly woman will appear and ask to lie beside him.

If the son agrees, warns the father, he will be dead the next morning. In order to keep this from happening, the father moves the family to another village. The heavenly woman comes to the son in the new village and he lets her lie with him. The next morning he is dead. The heavenly woman is horrified because she had no intention of harming the boy.

She persuades an old shaman to build a fire and toss a lizard into the hottest part of it, proclaiming that anyone who loves the youth enough to retrieve the lizard from the fire will restore his youth to him.

Three people try and fail – the heavenly woman, the mother and the father. Following that, a plain girl who secretly loves the youth walks into the fire, retrieves the lizard, and the boy awakens.

The story doesn’t end here.

The shaman throws the lizard into the fire again and tells the boy that he must make a decision. If he chooses to retrieve the lizard from the fire, the girl will live and his mother will die. If he leaves the lizard in the fire, his mother will live but the girl will die. The story doesn’t tell which decision the youth makes.

The myth demonstrates man’s double anima. The heavenly woman is his light anima. The mother represents the human anima. The plain girl represents his human capacity for relatedness.

If he sacrifices his mother, he can have a human relationship with the young woman. Yet if he sacrifices the maiden in order to save his mother, he will be a possible candidate for being the next shaman. If he does not choose between them, he loses both.

The book also explores the role of other feminine forms. The last section deals with contamination of the feminine elements – mixing the mother with other feminine forms, doing the same with the mother complex, the anima, and so on.

The Fisher King and The Handless Maiden

This book is about society’s wounded feeling function, a wound so common most don’t know there is a problem. The book’s purpose is to search out this woundedness through two myths.

In the Fisher King myth, a young prince in the forest, hungry, tries to steal a salmon that’s roasting on a spit. The salmon burns him badly and he is in terrible pain. There are variations on story. In one version, the part of his body the prince burns is his mouth. The angry owner of the camp shoots an arrow into his thigh.

A different version has the arrow going into his testicles. In all versions the wound is the male, creative part – cool, rational, objective, having to do with his generative parts. In the next section of the myth the prince is healed, but after three days he dies.

If one examines the myth, it is possible to see that the king is the deepest part of ourselves.

The Fisher king wound is the male part of a man.

To fish means inner work – dreams, meditation, the arts, the inner world, anything to do with higher realms of consciousness. Poetry, art, teaching – they make life bearable while a wounded person is trying to reach healing.

Eating the salmon in the myth represents the fisher king taking on consciousness before he is mature enough, like Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Many modern men live their entire lives with the fisher king wound, feeling inferior and

lacking warmth or attentiveness.

Anything put into the unconsciousness after it has been in the consciousness (for example, the salmon) turns dark and damaging. If one refuses what is in the conscious, it can turn into a symptom and have compulsive power over that person. The cure is that we restore it into consciousness.

To journey spiritually it is necessary to understand that opposites are always close to each other – each must perform its proper function. One must also realize that it is impossible to create without paying tribute to destruction.

The salmon is a symbol for Christ. The fact that the fisher king puts it in his mouth is like first communion. He is taking something before he knows how to handle it.

The king represents the central focus of one’s personality: if it’s wounded, the entire personality is wounded and suffers.

The fisher king myth gives us a glimpse of modern society, showing us that despair and isolation are present. Only myth or art can hold a message this profound.

This myth also points out the tendency for men to look backward and long for the security of mother and infancy.

The Grail castle can be compared to our going to our inner castle every night (our dreams).

Johnson says that consciousness is most easily accomplished at two times in a man’s life - mid-adolescence (when he is still naïve) and midlife (when he has earned the right through life experiences).

The wounded part’s function is to aid in development of the mature man - then it can be left behind.

In the myth of the Handless Maiden, there lives a miller with whom the devil strikes a bargain. The devil will teach the miller how to grind grain faster and easier and in exchange the miller will give the devil that which stands behind the mill. The deal is struck and after the miller has reaped his benefit, he and the devil go behind the mill so that the devil may collect his prize.

The miller thinks they are talking about an old tree, but the miller’s daughter is standing there. The devil wants her; the miller refuses. The devil chops off her hands and takes them with him. It is important to note that the daughter does not object to the devil cutting off and taking her hands.

Both stories (the Fisher King and the Handless Maiden) are about mechanical advantages versus loss of feeling.

When technology thrives, the price is paid by feelings, causing depression, lack of self-confidence, incompetence, and difficulty coping with life. Free gifts like art, poetry, and nature, however, can be enjoyed without guilt or dire consequences.

The handless maiden myth shows "doing" versus "I can’t." If she has no hands, it is impossible to do. It is her hands that are damaged.

An example of the handless maiden in real life can be found in the daughter of an alcoholic. Her family makes her the scapegoat, sometimes with her permission, sometimes without. She has to make the awful choice of being faced with whether to be familyless or handless.

Most women in today’s patriarchal society suffer like the handless maiden, because of the technological, non-feeling world in which we live. When they fail to respond to their symptoms, they remain wounded.

When wounded, a woman heals through stillness and solitude, if she will endure the suffering while keeping her faith. Her healing comes from within and happens spontaneously. A mechanically served life is unacceptable to her. She reconciles.

The woman finds her way to Self. She is driven through personal unhappiness to find and attain a deeper level of being. A man needs to learn to find the curative power of solitude.

The handless maiden can also reside within a man and show up in his wounded feelings and loneliness. Most men suffer the fisher king wound, yet are unable to explain their anger or the reason for their suffering.

The collective unconscious determines what will be the next step in a group’s evolution. Mechanical versus spiritual seems to be the crux of the matter – both cannot thrive together. Everything we get has a price. Each individual must personally face the problem of wounded feelings, because there seems to be no collective solution. The outcome of suffering is consciousness.

The two myths are forecasts of what lies ahead for our society. Whether or not we are healed lies within us. The first step is to accept suffering as an internal event. The healed person will then become a person who heals others by bringing a conscious solution into the world. Before one can heal, they must take responsibility.

Femininity Lost and Regained

This book takes us to Greece – 500 B.C. – Athens. Greece was a man’s world. The feminine was pushed into the background. The more the masculine flourished, the worse it was for the feminine.

Although this time was referred to as the Golden Age of Greece, it didn’t last, because if a civilization is to remain the best, it must have a balance of feminine and masculine.

Johnson uses The Theban Plays by Sophocles to illustrate the Greek point of view and the imposition of masculine law. The story of Oedipus tells us much about loss of the feminine.

In the play, Cadmus, head of the Theban Empire, founds a city and a dragon eats the people. Cadmus kills it and puts its teeth inside the walls of the city. The teeth later turn into giants. Oedipus is born. A seer predicts that he will kill his father and marry his mother.

Instead of killing Oedipus, as his parents are supposed to do, they put an iron pin through his feet and instruct a servant to take him away and leave him to die. Instead, the servant gives him to a shepard who takes him to a nearby kingdom where the king takes him in and names him Oedipus.

Eventually Oedipus learns of the seer’s predictions and flees to Thebes, his birthplace. He murders a man he encounters on the road (his father, except he doesn’t know it). A monster, the Sphinx, rules the kingdom for a while. The Sphinx asks a riddle which Oedipus is able to answer.

As a result of answering it, Oedipus is given the widowed queen (the mother of Oedipus, although neither Oedipus nor his mother knows she’s his mother). Eventually Oedipus declares that the king’s killer (he still doesn’t know the king was his father) will be punished.

A blind prophet is summoned and reveals that it is Oedipus who killed his father and married his mother. The mother hangs herself to pay for her guilt in this incestuous relationship with Oedipus. In order to pay for his, Oedipus takes the brooches from his mother’s dress and sticks them into his eyes.

Oedipus is eventually overthrown and Creon takes over as ruler.

The Oracle at Delphi has decreed that, upon Oedipus’ death, he shall be buried outside Athens, and that his power will thus bring a cultural flowering for Athens.

Later in the play, after Oedipus’ death, Antigone (Oedipus’ daughter) wants burial for her dead brother against Creon’s order, but Creon refuses and orders death for Antigone and her sister.

At the end of the play, as a result of Creon’s authority (masculinity) all things feminine have been destroyed (Antigone and Creon’s wife).

Starting with the beginning of the story, Cadmus imposed masculine order on Thebes. Since no provision was made for the feminine, disaster struck in the form of a dragon. When Cadmus kills the dragon and the five teeth turn into giants, balance is restored for a while.

The feminine has become a dragon because it has been excluded. Room is left for fate to intervene in the story because the king and queen don’t kill Oedipus. One sign of the feminine in the story is the goodness of the servant who doesn’t leave Oedipus to die.

In the play, Oedipus is placed in the exact spot where fate wants him due to (1) his parents’ refusal to kill him and (2) his fleeing back to Thebes in later life. The burden now falls to Oedipus. His actions will determine whether or not consciousness will occur.

The Sphinx represents a stage of the feminine, a test of consciousness. By answering the riddle Oedipus saves the land from oppression.

This is an example of how the ordinary side of us lives within conventional laws, yet the noble side of us tries to move toward consciousness. In order to get consciousness, a price must be paid. If one is unwilling, his life results in loneliness and anxiety. The story is about disobeying the natural flow of energy. The hero’s quest is an inner journey.

According to Johnson, what the play is about is as follows: A man has been called by fate to achieve consciousness through his inner work. This means sense of abandonment of his previous values and acceptance of the responsibility that it brings. His blindness is a price, as is banishment from his former kingdom. Disintegration of hereditary ties is a punishment.

We are only guilty of things that are our own personal responsibility, so in that sense Oedipus is not guilty due to what fate caused. However, collective guilt must be experienced to attain consciousness. Therefore, we must carry the guilt of our culture. Spiritual and emotional responsibility is necessary.

Oedipus blinding himself is evidence that he is now focusing on inner things (his insight) and focusing on cultural creativity.

The flowering of Athens gave us rich culture, art, politics, but the three men who followed Oedipus neither paid tribute to the feminine nor paid the price of consciousness. Creon lacked compassion and Oedipus’ two sons killed each other. They denied the feminine by wounding the women who were closest to them.

In the story, Oedipus took responsibility for his incest. He exiled himself. He turned his energies inward at the rate at which he was able. He grew. To refuse to grow makes someone else take responsibility. Creon failed where Oedipus succeeded. Oedipus was noble. Creon was not. Oedipus acted responsibly. Creon did not. Oedipus brought the golden age of Athens. Creon created dysfunctional relationship. Creon loved power and lacked compassion.

Other myths that demonstrate wounding of the feminine are Tristan and Iseult, Romeo and Juliet and Nala and Damayanti.

The story of Nala and Damayanti comes from the Hindu sacred scripture The Mahabharata and it parallels the Oedipal myth but has a different attitude toward femininity. .

In the story, Nala and Damayanti, children of different kings, want to be together. Nala catches a golden swan that bargains for its freedom by agreeing to pretend to be Nala and court Damayanti for him. Meantime Damayanti’s father has announced a contest to see who will win Damayanti.

The ruling deity of India, Indra, wants to win. Indra instructs Nala to court Damayanti on his (Indra’s) behalf. Openly Nala does court her for Indra; secretly he proclaims his own love. She admits love for Nala and at the contest she chooses him.

The god of wrath is furious and eventually gets even by inducing Nala to gamble away his whole kingdom (gambling represents the masculine). Damayanti is left only one sari, but eventually Nala steals half of it.

Many other catastrophes occur in the story but eventually Damayanti’s touch restores Nala to kingly status.

Damayanti is the one in the story who has strength and wisdom. She chooses a human over gods. She knows when to act and when to endure. She represents the power of the feminine.

Oedipus was assigned a fate which he could not avert. The same with Nala and Damayanti. In both stories the gods were more powerful than the people. Anytime the gods inter a myth, evolution is at hand.

One of the King Arthur legends also teaches about the interior realm of consciousness.

The legend goes that a neighboring king caught King Arthur as a young man poaching. He offered freedom to him if he could answer the question, "What does woman really want?"

The only person who could answer this was an old witch, but he was warned that her price would be high. Her price turned out to be her own marriage to Gawain, Arthur’s best friend. Gawain agreed to the marriage for Arthur’s sake. The witch gave her answer: every woman wants power over her own life.

Gawain and Arthur fulfilled their part of the bargain and on the wedding night the witch turned into a beautiful woman. She told Gawain that since he’d been gracious to her, she’d appear as her old self half of the time and her new self the other half. Which did he choose for the day and which for the night, she wanted to know. Gawain told her she could chose. However, since he had given her respect and control over her life she would be the lovely maiden all the time.

Commentary

Johnson’s three books are alike in that all three point out how patriarchal most cultures have been and are. This has certainly been true in Christianity and Judaism. It is interesting to note that there are no female heroes in Western mythology. All of our great love stories turn out tragically. The great love stories of India, however, turn out well, because in Hindu myth, the women stand firm.

In Western mythology the emphasis is placed upon materialism. In Eastern mythology the emphasis is placed upon relationship.

Each of these books kept referring over and over to "paying the price." Becoming responsible requires becoming more psychologically conscious and this is what is required of each of us if we are to achieve personal growth and maturation.

Our society is wounded and, the more intelligent the person, the worse the wound. One can’t retreat to a simpler time, but must go forward.

Johnson predicts that femininity will return as soon as the masculine evolution is secure. This is beginning to happen. In 1950 the Catholic Church included the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary in the all-male trinity. Jung said it was the greatest moment in Church history since the Reformation.

We must nurture both masculine and feminine aspects of our personalities and our cultures to achieve wholeness. This is the only way our civilization will flourish.