I have a feeling that when I’m older and reflecting on my experience as a young man, there will be a vital point in the story when I exclaim, “And then I found The Feminine Mystique!” It’s bewildering to consider that the work — which launched the modern feminist movement almost 20 years before I was born — could relate in any significant way to my own life. In fact it’s more than just significant; the application to and explanation of my own life is monumental. But I’m not alone there. I think Friedan’s work applies to our entire society. My new theory is that many of the forces affecting women in the ’50s and ’60s now affect both genders equally.

I’m only halfway through the book, so I can’t summarize the entire thing yet. I’m trying to get in the habit of posting little bits as I read, instead of trying to cover the whole whopper once I’m done. (That’s been difficult since I’ve realized I’m kind of like an Ent — those tree-like creatures from Lord of the Rings. Treebeard’s saying went something like, “It takes us a really long time to say anything at all, so we don’t say anything unless it’s worth taking a really long time to say.”)

My statement about the book’s ongoing validity relates to Friedan’s thesis:

“It is my thesis that the core of the problem for women today is not sexual but a problem of identity… Our culture does not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings, a need which is not solely defined by their sexual role” (p. 77).

I don’t know if it’s pure coincidence or if my reading habits are starting to converge towards a single subject, but this statement was a perfect follow-up to a book I just finished reading: The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung. In that short book the famous psychologist seemed to be inviting someone to tackle the subject of feminism by taking the individuality angle. As Jung wrote:

“The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses” (p. 12).

In the natural progression of my independent studying, I’ve noticed a shift from fiction and philosophy to nonfiction and psychology, with the dividing time period being the 1950s. Both of these books fall in the second category, and I’m sort of surprised by Jung’s near-total absence from The Feminine Mystique. Jung’s book was published in 1957 and Friedan’s in 1963, so maybe there wasn’t enough lag time between the two.

Like I said, I still have a large chunk of it to read, but while Jung’s name has only been mentioned once so far, an entire chapter was dedicated to Sigmund Freud. In a way I’m glad about that, though, since it’s now obvious that I had a very skewed idea of Freud’s work. What I mean is, I only knew about the beneficial (or potentially beneficial) nature of his theories of the subconscious mind. I had no idea that he was sexist, or even hated or feared women. And I took a class in college called “Freud and Psychoanalysis”!

Apparently Freud was “a prisoner of his own culture,” by which Friedan means Victorian Europe at the dawn of the 20th century.

“In Freud’s time, evidently, cultural hypocrisy forced the repression of sex. [...] He then developed his theory by describing all the stages of growth as sexual… Something that could be described in physiological terms, linked to an origin of anatomy, seemed more comfortable, solid, real, scientific, as he moved into the unexplored country of the unconscious mind” (pp. 106-107).

Friedan explains that, while psychoanalysis was helpful in the therapy setting, its interpretation by mainstream culture was very damaging. Almost all the freedoms that women fought for from the mid-1800s (including the right to vote, which wasn’t granted to females until 1920 — though I didn’t know that!) until the end of WWII had reportedly vanished by the early 1960s.

“What happened to women is part of what happened to all of us in the years after the war. We found excuses for not facing the problems we once had the courage to face. The American spirit fell into a strange sleep; …the whole nation stopped growing up. All of us went back into the warm brightness of home…

“It was easier, safer, to think about love and sex than about communism, McCarthy, and the uncontrolled bomb. It was easier to look for Freudian sexual roots in man’s behavior, his ideas, and his wars than to look critically at his society and act constructively to right its wrongs” (pp. 186-187).

But as she goes on to say, “the individual” couldn’t solely be blamed for what happened in our culture. Psychologists, anthropologists, guidance counselors, professors and magazine editors all began taking Freud’s “lead,” telling women that self-fulfillment came from staying in the home, serving their husbands and children in their biological role. Once that caught on, highly paid marketers and advertisers took it to a new level of absurdity, manipulating the fear and guilt of women, knowing that these newly created housewives were responsible for 75 percent of spending in the home. (By the way, British documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis is the only person I’ve found today who seems to care about this topic. His documentary The Trap explores the ways that Edward Bernays, Freud’s own nephew, became rich by applying Freud’s theories to propaganda and brainwashing efforts in post-war America. Although, Friedan doesn’t seem aware of this either. Edward’s mother is mentioned in passing as a “strong” woman from Freud’s life — but Edward himself is totally omitted.)

So ladies and gentleman, we enter a new phase of the mystical creative journey. From not on there won’t be so many muddled, abstract philosophical explorations. Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus marked the end of that painful phase for me. Now I set out to explain the real world and what might be the most bizarre mystery of the universe: PEOPLE!

He then makes an example of homosexuality to illustrate what is normal versus abnormal behavior, and what are rational versus irrational feelings. He says that “what psychoanalysis undertakes to do is to remove abnormal feelings” (p. 90). In fact this is far from the truth. Psychoanalysis is concerned with neuroses that arise when fears and desires are repressed into the subconscious. Psychoanalysis would never hope to turn someone from homosexuality to heterosexuality; it would uncover the repressed homosexual urges hidden beneath the conscious mind of a heterosexual. The point of psychoanalysis — and modern psychology in general — is to help people feel better and lead more fulfilling lives, not to make them “normal.”

Coincidentally, I’m currently reading Man And His Symbols (edited and co-authored by Carl Jung), and I just came to a passage that illustrates this point. Jung explains how, while “the surface of our world seems to be cleansed of all superstitious and irrational elements,” this is not actually the case. “Skepticism and scientific conviction exist in him side by side with old-fashioned prejudices, outdated habits of thought and feeling, obstinate misinterpretations, and blind ignorance” (p. 86) But I’m straying from my desired topic, so I must return to Lewis.

After suggesting that psychoanalysis could cure a homosexual or a person who has an “irrational” fear of war (forgive me for not knowing how fear of war could ever be irrational), Lewis says it becomes a question of morality. The fact that he equates a soldier’s bravery with Christian morality is one issue. But then he continues to explain that free will allows people to choose, and subsequent life choices “are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself” (p. 92). I mentioned this to my brother, and he informed me that this is the basis for every role-playing video game (i.e. – RPG) ever made; the character’s decisions add up over time to create a being that is essentially good or bad. We both had a laugh over this, but I shuddered with fear over the next point is Lewis’ statement.

Lewis argues that morality is relative, which as a concept has some truth in it, but not the way he presents it. It goes like this: If a person who is basically “bad” commits a good act, it’s a much greater event than if a basically “good” person commits the same good act. On the other hand, if a “good” person commits a sin, it’s much, much worse than if a “bad” person carries out the same sin. This is supposedly because bad people cannot discern right from wrong. Concerning our actions, he says that “the bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters” (p. 93).

How this translates in my mind is to justify an act such as the Holocaust; in other words, it was okay for Hitler to run a Nazi government and commit mass genocide, because he was a “bad” person and was not equipped to make choices based on Christian morality. That example is too rough for you? Then consider it this way, once again how I interpret it. Lewis’ argument puts obedient Christians in a bind, for they want to believe that they are “good,” and for a good person to commit even the slightest sin is much worse than anything that a “bad” person could do. And above all else, Christians want to be admitted into heaven when they die, so they must always be concerned about their actions and feel guilty for their sins. Those high up in the Christian organization, or powerful leaders with ties to the church, can get away with being “bad” people, making unsound choices and committing acts of horror, because they have the excuse of being incapable of moral choice.

As Lewis puts it: “That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it” (p. 91). That Christianity (nor any other religion) has not fixed the dilemmas of the human individual or its civilization is a fitting enough closing to Lewis’ flawed statement. We need to develop a better explanation for why we are how we are. Since I have read Freud extensively and I am getting further into Jung’s work, I’m confident that psychology will provide the most fulfilling answers in that regard. Now the real problem is getting people to think critically about a document of indoctrination like Mere Christianity.

1. Religion and churches are all man-made entities
2. Ethics and morals are independent from faith and cannot arise from it
3. Religion is both amoral and immoral

Hitchens then runs through many true examples of the pitfalls of religion before branching into discussions of metaphysics and philosophy. I’ll share with you some of my favorite sections. Hitchens tears the Mormon religion limb from limb, asserting that 25,000 (twenty-five thousand) words in the Book of Mormon were copied directly from the Old Testament of the Holy Bible. An additional 2,000 words were taken from the New Testament. And yet Joseph Smith supposedly transcribed the text from golden plates delivered from God by an angel. Given that Mormonism is one of the largest religions to be created in America, it’s a shame that Hitchens doesn’t discuss the joke that is Scientology (I think I’ll save my own comments on that subject for another blog post).

My other favorite section explains the Catholic Church’s friendly treatment of Hitler’s Nazi regime. At one time, the Papacy even celebrated Hitler’s birthday. Then after WWII, the Vatican used its power to provide passports and funding for Nazi leaders to flee to South America. But these two examples are merely the most humorous, and not nearly representative of all the evil that religion has caused on earth.

Naturally, a book like this would be lacking without any mention of psychology and literature. Hitchens does reference Freud on a few occasions. Freud said that religion cannot free human beings of their fear of death. Likewise, Freud apparently said that religion is inevitable until mankind stops fearing death and breaks its tendency for wishful thinking, neither of which is extremely probable. Hitchens claims that “philosophy steps in where religion fails, just as science and medicine for alchemy, and astronomy for astrology.” But his main suggestion for deriving moral behavior without religion is essentially to obey karma. Hitchens suggests that the saying “treat others as you would wish to be treated” can be taught to children and requires no violence, massacres, or sadistic behavior.

Hitchens is one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve ever come across. The extent of his intellect makes itself clear throughout the book. The book succeeds most at explaining all the disgusting behavior that religion has promoted and allowed. But obviously any one book isn’t going to convince the world that all current religions are outdated and irrelevant (as Bill Hicks would often say). Still, Hitchens says that a new enlightenment is necessary. He condones “the study of literature and poetry for its own sake and for the greater good of mankind.” He also commends the unrestricted pursuit of scientific discovery and the utilization of widespread information on the Internet.

And that, of course, is why I write on this blog.

Reading the book, I had the sense that Brown was speaking directly to me. It seemed to connect many different ideas, concepts, and experiences in my mind in ways I was unprepared or incapable of doing myself. It was a breath of fresh intellectual air, but it hit me like a tornado–and right from the start, too. The book is the result of Brown’s exhaustive studies of Freud’s psychoanalysis. However, it’s not a biography; it’s a highly interpretive work that connects psychology, philosophy (especially Hegel and Spinoza), history, and literature. Brown hopes to explain and eventually absolve mankind’s “restlessness and discontent.” One of my favorite paragraphs came on page 16:

“Mankind today is still making history without having any conscious idea of what it really wants or under what conditions it would stop being unhappy; in fact what it seems to be doing is making itself more unhappy and calling that unhappiness progress.”

“Freud’s real critique of religion…is the contention…that true humility lies in science. True humility, he says, requires that we learn from Copernicus that the human world is not the purpose or center of the universe; that we learn from Darwin that man is a member of the animal kingdom; and that we learn from Freud that the human ego is not even master in its own house.”

“History is shaped, beyond our conscious wills, not by the cunning of Reason but by the cunning of Desire.”

This page alone lessened the awkwardness I have felt for being a science nerd first and a reader/writer second. It suddenly made sense: why I was obsessed with astronomy in high school; why I took a history of Darwin class in college; why (also in college) I took a Freud/psychoanalysis class; why I couldn’t shake the knowledge I had accumulated through all three endeavors.

As with most theoretical nonfiction studies, things get extremely messy and somewhat less interesting towards the end. It’s a lot easier to construct the big ideas on page 16 than it is to divide them up into dozens of sub-ideas. Anyways, I highly recommend the book. (Does it seem weird to anyone else that most of the stuff I’ve been writing about is from the late 1950s?)