Emergence: Birthing the Feminine from the Womb of the Father

The path toward selfhood, at least when recalled from the safe distance and generous perspective of hindsight, is often marked by unexpected but strangely powerful moments of insight—moments when something that was veiled or hidden from conscious view suddenly becomes clearly seen and known. It’s as if memory, often what feels like soul-memory, unravels from within, and a portion of the Self merges with a profound archetypal energy that is perceived as being both inside and outside of the Self, putting us into alignment with the greater truth of who we are and know we are meant to become. This opening in consciousness reveals an understanding, at times, that is so shockingly, blatantly obvious that it prompts us to wonder how we could have been so blithely ignorant of a particular reality only moments before.

One of these life-shifting moments occurred for me during my own process of “Answering the Call” (Campbell, 2004; 2008). I had left my job in clinical voice/speech pathology after many years of feeling deeply ambivalent about my work and plagued by the sense that there was something more meaningful I was meant to do with my life, though I had no idea what that might be. I moved away from San Francisco, and, for the next five years, my life’s path unfolded in almost precisely the way that has been so infamously portrayed in Joseph Campbell’s (2004; 2008) outline of the Hero’s Journey: I traveled to far-off lands; I met Witches and Ogres and Wise Men/Women; I confronted Demons and I slayed Dragons; I received Magical Aid from the most unlikely people and places. It was a truly magical (if also challenging, lonely, and, at moments, existentially terrifying) time, which led me to an even more magical time when I found myself settling in Tucson, Arizona. There, I enrolled in a shamanic practitioner training program and began to go beyond reading books by Campbell and, also, Jung, to having a direct encounter with both my personal and the collective unconscious.

A series of “visions,” synchronicities, and nudges from “helpers” along the way led me to rent a condominium in a beautiful canyon in Tucson, owned, as fate would have it, by a Freudian analyst. Soon after I moved in, several minor issues in the condo demanded my landlord’s attention, and he came by several times to fix a few things. The issue that brought us together in what would become an endearing and abiding friendship involved a faulty transformer in my heating and cooling system that was producing an incessant, loud, high-pitched buzz. As a trained opera singer who trains opera singers, I will concede that I have a reputation for possessing ultra-refined hearing. This, in fact, was what my landlord suggested, in what I interpreted as a somewhat patronizing, “psychoanalytic tone,” when he entered the condo and couldn’t hear the sound that I (and all of my guests who entered the space) found maddening. The ensuing conversation with my seventy-seven-year-old landlord unfolded something like this:

Soha: You don’t hear that high-pitched buzz?

Len: I don’t. Do you think, perhaps, you might be very sensitive to noise?

Soha: Oh, I know I’m sensitive to noise. Do you think, perhaps, you might have a high-frequency hearing loss?

Len: Oh, I know I have a high-frequency hearing loss. (Then, as if reading my mind, he added): My hearing loss isn’t very relevant when I work with my patients because I’m not really listening to what they’re saying.

Thus began my introduction to post-Freudian feminist psychoanalytic theory.

What Len meant, I later understood, was that, in his approach to psychoanalysis, which was heavily influenced by feminist thought, he listened more for the underlying tone of his patients’ words than the actual words themselves. This approach is based largely on the work of French-Bulgarian psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva (1986), who strongly advocates for a reclaiming of what she terms the “maternal/semiotic/prosodic” elements of the voice over the “paternal/symbolic order” of words. Len’s description of Kristeva’s work was particularly intriguing to me because it seemed to support my own theories that had emerged during several months of shamanic meditation and ceremonial practice. I had experienced a series of “revelations” that pointed to a feminine cosmology in which the universe emerged not from The Masculine Word of God, but from The Feminine Voice of the Goddess. I sensed that my own life’s work was somehow connected with these revelations, but I wasn’t clear how.

Len, intrigued by my discoveries and wanting to support what he perceived as my intelligence and curiosity, began dropping off articles for me to read, beginning with the work of Kristeva, and then proceeding from Freud to Adler, Lacan, Kohut, Melanie Klein, Karen Horney, Jessica Benjamin, and Anna Freud, all the way to current perspectives on cognitive-behavioral and “evidence-based” approaches to psychotherapy. Len invited me to attend a seminar he was teaching for psychotherapists who were under his supervision, in which I spent the first few months in frustration and confusion, questioning how Freudian psychoanalytic theory could be relevant to me if I don’t have a phallus. Week after week, I listened to the class talk about the emergence of the child from the body of the mother, followed by the child’s inevitable rejection of the mother in preference for the coveted penis as it enters the paternal world of language. This made no sense to me; since the mother uses language to communicate with her child, and she is often the primary caregiver, how could the world of language be the world of the father, when both men and women speak? Furthermore, I had no conscious feelings of envy toward my brothers’ penises. Freud, and the Freudians, as far as I could tell, had written nothing but archaic nonsense. Still, I was determined to understand psychoanalytic theory, because I was convinced that there was something significant in it for me—something that seemed important for my future vocation that I had traveled so far and worked so hard to unearth.

I remember precisely the moment of insight that occurred for me as I struggled through Freud and the post-Freudians. I have a vivid memory of sitting in a small room with about five other students while they talked with Len about tall, pointy skyscrapers, jutting up into the sky. I grew weary at yet more interminable talk of Freud’s ubiquitous phallus. I struggled to understand what it meant to “abject” the mother in favor of entering the symbolic order. None of it made any sense to me. I wanted to move on to Jung (which, I suspected quite rightly, was unlikely to happen in a room full of Freudians), whose psychology felt much more copacetic with the shamanic work I was engaged in. I wanted to debunk Freud’s theories and move on to theories that spoke to a woman’s lived psychic experience—clearly, Freud’s perspective was outdated and wrong; didn’t anybody else see this?

Suddenly, though, something shifted, as if a spell had been lifted, and I started to understand. The images of all of those obelisks flooded my mind, as well as the towering, unyielding structures that are erected as testaments to man’s economic “progress”—masses of thick glass and steel that eat into the earth beneath the concrete of our crowded cities. In a flash of insight, I saw it clearly. I don’t have a phallus. But the world, the entire civilized world, of which I am presumably a part, does. If I wish to be part of the phallocentric world—to survive or succeed in it—I must reject the Mother and identify with the Father.

Every child who lives under patriarchy must step out of the pre-verbal, poetic vocalizations that carry affective resonance and instead, acquire the hard, structured consonants that transmit symbolic meaning in service to the Father God. As Jungian author Sylvia Brinton Perera (1981) explains, while boys step away from their mothers and are “supported by the outside world without inner dissonance” (p. 102), girls who want to thrive in the outer world must become “‘daughters of the father’—that is, well adapted to a masculine-oriented society—and have repudiated [their] own full feminine instincts and energy patterns, just as the culture has maimed or derogated most of them” (Perera, 1981, p. 7). Just what these “feminine energy patterns and instincts” are requires a process of excavation, as “the patriarchal ego of both men and women, to earn its instinct-disciplining, striving, progressive, and heroic stance, has fled from the full-scale awe of the goddess. Or it has tried to slay her, or at least to dismember and thus depotentiate her” (Perera, 1981, p. 7).

What the Freudian discourse was revealing to me was not that Freud’s theories are correct, either from an objective, essentialist psychological perspective or from a moralistic one. The discourse was revealing to me that Freud’s theories—which favor the authoritative, “monotheistic,” phallocentric lens through which so much of our daily lives are perceived and lived—simply are. They are in the continued objectification and abuses of our women. They are in the widespread poverty and destitution experienced by divorced and unmarried women across the globe. They are in the medical hierarchy in which I played the healing, mothering role to my patients while the doctors (both male and female) received five times my salary and 90 percent of the credit for my work. They are in the instances when I am categorically silenced by men in positions of self-appointed power and authority whenever I voice an opinion that is different from their own.

The silencing of women is supported and encouraged in patriarchal societies (albeit not always consciously) because the Mother herself was silenced when the Father transcended the earthly realms to claim his place as the invisible but indisputable overlord atop His Great Throne in the sky. Although Freud himself rejects religion per se, his freedom to exercise his own monotheistic, patriarchal authority comes through in his psychoanalytic doctrine, which decrees that he alone sees things as they are.

Freud’s unwavering confidence in his own perceptions and observations about human drives and behavior became psychological law, which so deeply penetrated the psychologies of “Modern Civilization” that it is, in many ways, impossible to distinguish who human beings are, or might have been, apart from Freud’s interpretations of them. Historian Omnia el Shakry (2014), author of The Arabic Freud, “traces a tale of historical interactions, hybridizations, and interconnected webs of knowledge production between the Arab world and Europe” (p. 89), through which “the imprint of Freudian psychology was becoming increasingly visible in the 1930s and 1940s in the focus on unconscious sexual impulses, as synopses and translations of Freud began to appear” (p. 93). Freud’s Word about the mind eventually infiltrated the collective mind itself. Freud created his own religion, and then proselytized it in nearly every corner of the globe.

Freud (1961) remarks in Civilization and its Discontents that religion offers humanity a clear doctrine of principles by which to live and a comforting, all-knowing figure who not only looks after humans on this earthly plane, but promises redemption after death, as well. Freud (1961) describes this human need for religion as “infantile,” pronouncing that, “the common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father. Only such a being can understand the needs of the children of men” (p. 74). Yet, in spite of his obvious contempt for this so-called infantilism in men, Freud used his own career, in which he established himself as the “Father of Modern Psychology” (whose lineage we continue worship nearly one hundred years after his death), to declare—through his thoughts, his actions, and his Word—his own apotheosis.

Echoing the Judeo-Christian declaration of man’s “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” (Genesis, 1:26, King James Version), Freud (1961) declares that, unlike the continually posed (and largely unanswerable) question as to the purpose of human life,

nobody talks about the purpose of the life of animals, unless, perhaps, it may be supposed to lie in being of service to man. But this view is not tenable either, for there are many animals of which man can make nothing, except to describe, classify and study them. (p. 75)

Here, Freud points to the essence of a patriarchal, capitalist economy in his implication that nature—those things outside of man—are only legitimate insofar as they are useful to man. If they do not further man’s scientific knowledge (man’s striving for omniscience) or serve man as serfs or slaves, they can have no innate purpose; no reason for existence.

Implicit in Freud’s assertions is the favoring of conscious man over the “unconscious” (or, at least, non-linguistic) natural world, and also the exertion of will, not only in the conquering of animals and nature, but in the conquering of man’s own psychology. It is this great conquering mentality that is at the center of the patriarchy, and it is this mentality that makes Freud’s ideas about finding one’s place in the world a questionable paradigm for the individuation of women and men who are more oriented toward feminine ways of being.

Freud (1961) emphasizes that men require the stability and engagement in suitable work for their mental health and well-being. He claims that

no other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. The possibility it offers of placing a large amount of libidinal components, whether narcissistic, aggressive, or even erotic, on to professional work and on to the human relations connected with it lends it a value by no means second to what it enjoys as something indispensable to the preservation and justification of existence in society. Professional activity is a source of special satisfaction if it is a freely chosen one—if, that is to say, by means of sublimation, it makes possible the use of existing inclinations, of persisting or constitutionally reinforced instinctual impulses. (p. 80)

Here, it can be assumed that Freud is referring to men’s work, men’s libidinal impulses, and men’s sublimation of their narcissism, aggression, and sexual impulses into the workplace, leaving no place in the workforce for women except as recipients of men’s repressed “libidinal components,” or by armoring themselves with these impulses and adopting them as if they were their own. But, in my estimation, they are not women’s own impulses. Yet, nearly all human beings, it seems, need meaningful engagement with society in order to feel a sense of connection and wholeness—to feel that they are part of the human race. If a woman’s impulses, libidinal or otherwise, are, indeed, different from a man’s, then what does “work” mean for her?

Perera (1981) suggests a movement toward a more integrated state of energetic potentials within each human, male and female; one that honors all aspects of humanity and divinity, moving

toward [the goddess]—and especially towards her culturally repressed aspects…[such] that the new individuating, yin-yang balanced ego must return to find its matrix and the embodied and flexible strength to be active and vulnerable, to stand its own ground and still to be empathetically related to others. (p. 7)

This, according to Perera (1981), is what is needed for all humans to come into balance. Yet the stereotypically masculine bias of Freud’s framework for finding purpose in one’s life—one that seems to exclude those who wish to embody more feminine aspects of being—can be inferred from the language he uses to describe his perceptions of the process. In Freud’s (1961) words, men “strive” for happiness (p. 76). They “aim” to avoid pain and seek pleasure (Freud, 1961, p. 76). Men are “threatened” with suffering from their bodies, from the external world, and from their “relations with other men” (Freud, 1961, p. 77). Men, it seems, are constantly engaged in some kind of warfare, against enemies seen or unseen. Even though Freud (1961) admits that man’s insistence on living in this way “is at loggerheads with the whole world” (p. 76), still, he offers no alternative for an existence in which man is in reverent, reciprocal relationship to or with his surroundings. In fact, Freud (1961) claims, the “better path” for dealing with the suffering of humanity is “that of becoming a member of the human community, and, with the help of a technique guided by science, going over to the attack against nature and subjecting her to the human will” (p. 77). According to Freud (1961), man’s success in the world “depends on the convergence of many factors, perhaps on none more than on the capacity of the psychical constitution to adapt its function to the environment and then to exploit that environment for a yield of pleasure” (p. 84).

Although our modern world has advanced since Freud, the traces of patriarchy have not disappeared, but, rather, as women are increasingly “invited” into the spaces of men, I fear the core essential issues of living in a patriarchal context have been driven deeper into the recesses of our collective unconscious, still active and, in some ways, playing a more insidious role in the lives of women who are striving to make sense of their places in the world.

James Hillman (1996), in his book The Soul’s Code, offers a more spiritually evolved and generally inclusive take on finding one’s place in the world. Summarizing Plato’s idea that “each person enters the world called” (Hillman, 1996, p. 7), Hillman (1996) states that

the soul of each of us is given a unique daimon before we are born, and it has selected an image or pattern that we live on earth. This soul-companion, the daimon, guides us here; in the process of arrival, however, we forget all that took place and believe we come empty into this world. The daimon remembers what is in your image and belongs to your pattern, and therefore your daimon is the carrier of your destiny. (p. 8)

This summarization happens to be in alignment with my own sense and experience of my life and destiny, although I question how economics, privilege, and hierarchical structures play into the validity of the claim that there is a pre-ordained destiny for everyone, and, indeed, how these factors affect one’s ability to answer the call once it is clear to him or her what that call is.

How, then, is anyone, particularly a woman, to take her place in the world of patriarchy? Can a depth psychological perspective help to elucidate the ways in which patriarchy’s long tentacles are, indeed, active and far-reaching, even and perhaps especially when men (and often women) insist that they are not? Can depth psychology offer a way through?

Perera (1981) suggests a descent to more feminine ways of being and knowing in her descriptions of the underworld goddess Ereshkigal’s cold, calculating “eyes of death” (p. 30).

These eyes obviate the patterns and ideals of habitual and collective rational consciousness—the way we see in linguistic confines, ‘trapped within conceptual spaces’ that form the world of differentiated appearances. They pierce through and get down to the substance of preverbal reality itself. They see, also, through the collective standards that are false to life as it is. Thus they destroy identification with animus ideals. They make possible a perception of reality without the distortions and preconceptions of superego. This means seeing, not what might be good or bad, but what exists before judgment, which is always messy and full of affect and of the preverbal percepts of the near senses (touch, smell, taste). This implies not caring first and foremost about relatedness to an outer other, nor to a collective gestalt or imperative. (Perera, 1981, p. 32)

This way of seeing, which has so often been judged negatively through a patriarchal, monotheistic lens, has always been natural and intuitive to me. In fact, I have been described by members of the operatic community as having “ears of death”—the same ears that my Freudian landlord suggested might be “too sensitive to noise,” but that allow me to discern through listening anything from undetected vocal injuries to the abnegation of a singer’s truth, will, or desire. I hear the way that Ereshkigal sees.

I was called to the “Hero’s Journey,” I now am convinced, in order to reclaim those feminine ways of knowing, and to re-enter the world through them, rather than in spite of them. This may seem ironic, given that the Hero’s Journey is criticized by many as being a masculine construct. However, I agree with Maureen Murdock’s (1990) assertion that there are “stages of the heroine’s journey that incorporate aspects of the journey of the hero, but the focus of female spiritual development is to heal the internal split between woman and her female nature” (p. 2). As a Daughter of the Patriarchy, when I began the Journey, Campbell’s (2008) paradigm was all I had; I had not yet met The Goddess. As it turned out, my Animus led me to her. He then waited patiently in the background while I grappled with how to bring her up from the depths of my inner knowing—I suspect, from the depths of ancestral memory. Now, my inner masculine and my inner feminine are negotiating a way to continue on this journey together. This, Murdock (1990) suggests, is precisely where the Journey of the Heroine ends—in the “integration of the masculine and the feminine” (p. 5).

This integration invites me to allow my feminine ways of knowing to emerge from beneath the conscious and unconscious choke-hold of all that I have had to silence or subdue in order to be alive and function in the world. This, it seems, is the terrain I must continue to navigate, because this is my calling: to find my own voice amidst the clamor and confusion of many voices that have silenced the Voice of the Goddess, and to allow it to be heard.

References

Buber, M. (1965). I and thou. New York: Vintage.

Campbell, J. (2008). The hero with a thousand faces (3rd ed.). New World Library: Novato, CA.

Campbell, J. (2004). The self as hero. In Pathways to bliss: Mythology and personal

transformation (pp. 111-133). Novato, CA: New World Library.

El Shakry, O. (2014). The Arabic Freud: The unconscious and the modern subject. Modern

Intellectual History, 11 (1), pp. 89-118. https://doi:10.1017/S14792443130000346

Freud, S. (1961). Civilization and its discontents. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard

edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 21, pp. 74-85). London, UK: Hogarth Press.

(Original work published 1930)

Hillman, J. (1996). The soul’s code: In search of character and calling. Warner Books: New York, NY.

Kristeva, J. (1986). The Kristeva reader. T. Moi (Ed.). Columbia University Press: New York, NY.

Mayes, C. (2005). Teaching mysteries. University Press of America, Inc.: Lanham, MD.

Murdock, M. (1990). The heroine’s journey. Shambala Publications, Inc. Boston, MA.

Perera, S.B. (1981). Descent to the goddess: A way of initiation for women. Inner City Books: Toronto, Canada.