Supplemental Essay: The Se Nurturer

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Introduction

As I said in the main essay, the female Se Nurturer is intended as a female equivalent of the male Se Champion. 

Comparing the two:

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A key component of the male Se Champion's development is an "Anima fight" to wrest his sexuality from the Great Mother, followed by a separate "Animus fight" to reconcile himself with the Great Father and be initiated into Men's societies.

In contrast, the female Se Nurturer reverses the roles to some extent. Her "Anima fight" with the Great Mother is about determining her own sexual identity and ultimately becoming a Great Mother herself, in other words, modeling herself after the mother figure and being accepted into the matriarchal collective. That is followed by a separate "Animus fight" where the Nurturer must disentangle her sexuality from the Great Father, fragment out a terrible Father and a Good Father, and introject the latter as an internal model for permissible love.

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The Se Nurturer's Anima fight

As described above, the Anima fight of the female Se Nurturer isn't about contending with the Great Mother over control of her libido per se. For the Se Nurturer, the Anima fight is instead about establishing her own sexual identity and ultimately becoming a Great Mother herself, in other words, modeling herself after the mother figure while maintaining her own identity. 

The Se Nurturer's Anima fight represents a variation on the earlier experience of the Ne Maiden:

Recapping the N-level: As I described in the "Intuition" chapter, an early version of the Persephone myth dates back to early fertility religions and describes Demeter as a cruel Great Mother goddess who entraps her daughter and never allows her to grow up. Sexual awakening is symbolized by a rape and a "marriage of death" effected by the paternal Antagonist. As described by Erich Neumann in Amor and Psyche: "Seen from the standpoint of the matriarchal world, every marriage is a rape of Kore, the virginal bloom, by Hades, the ravishing, earthly aspect of the hostile male."[1]

However, with the onset of the S-level and cultures that practiced early patriarchal polytheism, the Persephone myth changed over the centuries: The Great Mother goddess Demeter was demoted to a sister of Zeus and was worshipped as a sympathetic goddess of the harvest and agriculture. And Persephone's sexual awakening was celebrated as a girl's initiation into adulthood, much the same as boys were initiated into Men's societies.

An updated version of the Persephone myth became the centerpiece of the Eleusinian mysteries, initiations held every year in ancient Greece for the cult of Demeter and Persephone. In this newer (S-level) version, Persephone is abducted but also represented as fertile and ready for impregnation: It's about a rape turning into sacred motherhood, thus something sanctified. Even the abduction and rape were celebrated. The gods traditionally don't ask for consent from the objects of their desire, and a union between gods and mortals in this manner was often considered an honor. In the Greek and Roman myths many heroes were the issue of such liaisons, which provided them with a divine origin and special status among men. The story of Jesus Christ's origin is a similar example. In Persephone's case, her marriage to Hades made her queen of the underworld, giving her authority over that dominion on a par with her mother's dominion on earth. In that sense, Hades was a "good catch."

When Persephone eventually returns to Demeter, she has been pregnant and given birth to a future hero; she is the wife of Hades with a kingdom of her own, and she has taken on the role of Great Mother herself. In this context, the Se Nurturer resembles the Si Redeemer: Persephone enjoys union with Demeter much in the same way that the Redeemer enjoys union with the Great Father. The daughters participating in the Eleusinian mysteries are sanctified by these stories and rituals much as the sons are sanctified by the initiations into the Men's societies. As I described in the "Redeemer" section: Once initiated into the Men's society, the son is no longer a son; he has been reborn divine. As Campbell says, "Ideally, the invested one has been divested of his mere humanity and is representative of an impersonal cosmic force. He is the twice-born: he has become himself the father."[2] The Eleusinian mysteries carried much the same meaning for girls in her relation to motherhood and sexuality.

Erich Neumann describes portions of the Eleusinian mysteries in his book The Great Mother. He says that the abduction of Persephone (described in the mysteries as a "Kore") shows a symbolic fascination with sexuality. She pulls on a phallic flower--the narcissus--to open up the pit of Hades, and the seedy pomegranate that traps her in Hades is her fertile womb. Her return to Demeter at the end represents "the annulment of the male rape and incursion, the restoration after marriage of the matriarchal unity of mother and daughter." In this reunion, "the daughter becomes identical with the mother; she becomes a mother and is so transformed into Demeter."[3]

Neumann says that some artwork from the period shows Persephone "full grown and almost identical with her virgin-mother Demeter. Virgin and mother stand to one another as flower and fruit, and essentially belong together in their transformation from one to the other." They form a yin-and-yang duality: "The whole is permeated by the self-contained transformative unity of mother and daughter, Demeter and Kore. This unity of Demeter and Kore is the central content of the Eleusinian mysteries."[4]

Secondarily, initiation into the matriarchal collective via mystery religions such as the Eleusinian mysteries were a way for girls to introject feminine Cultural canon, which then became their internal Anima: An ideal for feminine behavior.

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The Animus fight

As described in the introduction, in traditional societies girls needed to engage in an Animus fight in order to separate their own sexuality out from the Great Father figure and derive an internal Animus. Thus, the onset of puberty involves fragmenting the Good Father off from the Terrible Father in order to "depotentiate" the latter and introject the former into their personality as an Animus. As Carl Jung says, "Woman is compensated by a masculine element and therefore her unconscious has, so to speak, a masculine imprint. [...] The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros [...] and in the same way that the anima gives relationship and relatedness to a man's consciousness, the animus gives to woman's consciousness a capacity for reflection, deliberation, and self-knowledge."[5]

In the section on the Se Champion I described the myth of Perseus and the Medusa as a typical boy's Anima fight: Perseus kills the female Medusa and subsequently rescues Andromeda from a dragon representing a deadly phallic companion of the Great Mother, in other words, a daemonic version of the Great Father. By comparison, the girl's Animus fight views the struggle from the point of view of the princess Andromeda: Held captive by the Terrible Father in the form of a deadly dragon, she is rescued by a Good Father figure in the form of a hero who comes to her aid.

To the young girl, the patriarchy seems overwhelming--a fearsome dragon--and she needs a hero to help set her free. As Erich Neumann describes the situation in The Fear of the Feminine: "The female ego has the absolute and, in a certain sense, correct conviction that it cannot accomplish this act by the strength of her 'own ego' but is dependent on the help of archetypally masculine power."[6] The arrival and assistance of a hero allows the girl to regard masculinity in a positive light and introject a friendly Animus figure. Over time, the internalized positive Animus becomes a force she can claim for herself: A sense of personal independence, autonomy, and higher consciousness, with or without a partner.

The S-level integration of Animus and Anima in this manner represent a friendly alliance between the young girl, the surrounding patriarchy, and a future male partner. As I said in the main essay, at the S-level marriage is more of a partnership, a relationship to be worked out via reciprocal altruism and adherence to rules and rituals. The Se Nurturer is often a full partner in her relationships with men and may even play the role of willing seductress for the right partner.

This attitude shows up in later myths, such as the myth of Psyche and Eros. Psyche was a mortal princess whose beauty rivaled that of the goddess Aphrodite. Aphrodite was jealous and cursed Psyche to be sacrificed to a dragon. But Aphrodite's son Eros, the god of love, fell in love with Psyche and had her transported to a rich castle to live with him. However, Psyche remained a prisoner to Eros; the god only visited her at night and forbade her to see him and learn his identity. Psyche eventually disobeyed Eros and lit a candle to see who was visiting her at night; Eros abandoned her and flew away. To win back Eros, Psyche sought out Aphrodite and submitted to a series of trials to show her love for Eros. She eventually failed the last trial which involved a journey to the underworld; but by then she had rekindled Eros' love for her, and Eros came to her rescue. Eros married Psyche, and Psyche was granted immortality; she became known as the goddess of the soul.

The beginning of the myth betrays its origins back in early N-level fertility religions: Aphrodites is a persecuting Great Mother figure; the device of sacrificing Psyche to a dragon recalls the N-level "marriage of death" and an abduction and rape by a deadly companion of the Great Mother; and Psyche's imprisonment by Eros harks back to the imprisonment of the N-level Maiden and Muse by an Antagonist serving as Great Father figure. 

However, the remainder of the story (the abandonment of Psyche by Eros and her efforts to win him back) represents an update to the S level. The story of Psyche and Eros is related by the Roman philosopher and orator Apuleius in his novel The Golden Ass, written around 150 AD, and it reflects an S-level understanding of femininity: Psyche becomes an active participant in restoring her marriage to Eros, and she even effects a reconciliation with Aphrodite at the end as a fellow divinity. The latter half of the myth shows Psyche as equal to Eros in deciding their mutual fate, thus effectively turning her into a seductress. 

Eros still rescues Psyche in the end, consistent with an S-level hero's journey. But Eros rescues her in order to make her an equal rather than a prisoner. Psyche basically practices reciprocal altruism: She undertakes a personal sacrifice in order to prompt the same from Eros in turn. And Eros as rescuing hero becomes a friendly Animus figure for Psyche, representing an ideal for a loving partner and a source of personal strength. It has also been suggested that the trials posed by Aphrodite for Psyche become a way for Psyche to imbibe female Cultural canon and an Anima image of adult femininity, much as the Eleusinian mysteries played the role of initiation into female culture for earlier generations.

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Matriarchal orientation of Se Nurturers

Using Psyche as an example, it seems that the female Se Nurturer has a lot in common with the male Se Champion. She is an active participant in her own fate, willing to break rules if she finds herself in a bind, a fighter when the cause benefits her, and willing to engage in reciprocal altruism to get what she wants.

Like the male Se Champion, the female Se Nurturer occupies the Sexuality side of the Sexuality-Versus-Spirituality divide; she is a lover and a collectivist. She also tends to have a "matriarchal orientation."

To recap: In my description of the Se Champion, I said that Se Champions in general exhibit a "matriarchal orientation" in their make-up: There remains a focus on the Great Mother (that is, an attachment to the mother figure in the family) that marks the personality of the Se Champion even in adulthood. [...] Thus, alongside the more traditional male gender roles (authoritarian, spiritual, ascetic, etc.) there exist men who incorporate a "matriarchal orientation," such as rescuers of damsels in distress, Don Juan lovers, sensitive or effeminate men, artistic temperaments, men who never grow up and remain tied to their mother's apron-strings, etc.

Up to the S level, the psychological development of girls is generally the same as that for boys: 

• At the N level the infant starts life in thrall to the Great Mother and slowly "individuates" and creates itself as an independent entity;

• When the S level is reached, progress is marked by a transition from the matriarchal to the patriarchal stages. The Great Father represents a welcome alternative to the oppressive Great Mother who dominated at the N level, and the Great Father becomes a focus for hero narratives guiding the child's mastery of the world.

In his book The Fear of the Feminine Erich Neumann says that, up to this point, children of both sexes develop in the same manner: "In regard to the primal relationship to the mother, i.e., the first phase of childhood, the same conditions hold true for both the boy and the girl. [...] The progression from the matriarchal to the patriarchal phase is just as necessary for the female as for the male, at least in modern Western culture."[7]

But Neumann goes on to say that at the S level the girl's identity with the gender of the mother makes the association with the mother stronger and the bridge to the father weaker. Thus: "We have drawn attention elsewhere to the decisive significance of the fact that by separating from the mother and joining the father's world, the boy 'comes into his own' because the Self represented by the father archetype has the same gender as he does. The reverse holds true for the girl. Even after the Self has 'migrated' from the mother to the daughter, this childlike, daughterly Self remains identical to the gender of the mother archetype. This symbolic fact means that the mother-daughter relationship with its more intimate connection of ego and Self as well as consciousness and the unconscious is fundamentally closer to nature than is the mother-son relationship. [...] The girl's closer tie to the mother archetype and to the matriarchal phase make her separation especially difficult. Persistence in the primal relationship and hence persistence in an essentially unconscious, matriarchal existence is a distinct possibility and temptation for the woman... [...] The matriarchal world is essentially 'man-hating' because it is a world in its own right with values and attitudes differing from those of the patriarchate. The juxtaposition of matriarchy and patriarchy as opposites also includes a mutual devaluation; as we have attempted to demonstrate, this very juxtaposition is what makes the transition from the one phase to the other so very difficult for the child's ego."[8]

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Matriarchal orientation for women: Personality profiles

In The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious Carl Jung says that when girls become too attached to their mother it can result in "an overdevelopment of feminine instincts," resulting in an exaggerated maternal instinct. For example: "The exaggeration of the feminine side means an intensification of all female instincts, above all the maternal instinct. The negative aspect is seen in the woman whose only goal is childbirth. To her the husband is obviously of secondary importance; he is first and foremost the instrument of procreation, and she regards him merely as an object to be looked after, along with children, poor relations, cats, dogs, and household furniture. Even her own personality is of secondary importance; she often remains entirely unconscious of it, for her life is lived in and through others, in more or less complete identification with all the objects of her care. First she gives birth to the children, and from then on she clings to them, for without them she has no existence whatsoever." Jung says of such mothers: "Driven by ruthless will to power and a fanatical insistence on their own maternal rights, they often succeed in annihilating not only their own personality but also the personal lives of their children..."[9]

The adoption of a casual or dismissive attitude toward the Masculine influence is akin to the myths of the Se Champions Theseus and Jason, who seduce women from the enemy camp to assist them in their quests but later abandon those same women. Both male Se Champions and female Se Guardians tend to be lovers, seducers, and seductresses, but that doesn't necessarily make them eternally loyal. As I said about the Se Champion: Reciprocal altruism is about deal-making: The two parties each have their own agenda, and they try to work out a common ground between them. But if the premises of the original deal are not examined and renewed on a regular basis, the deal may break down over time, leaving the two parties with divergent agendas and little else.

Erich Neumann emphasizes that the S level with its exogamy and the splitting of the world into matriarchal and patriarchal camps can lead to a latent sense of enmity and mutual devaluation between the two. If a woman maintains a strong matriarchal orientation, it can both strengthen her bond with women and weaken her bond with men. Neumann says, "[P]sychologically and often sociologically the woman remains in the women's group--the mother clan--and maintains her continuity 'upward' in relationship to the group of mothers and 'downward' to the group of daughters. Her solidarity with the proximity to women and the Feminine coincide with her segregation and sense of alienation from men and the Masculine. [...] [T]he dominance of the maternal element prevents any individual and complete meeting between man and woman, Masculine and Feminine. A part of this is, or is identical with, the woman's experience of the male and of the Masculine as a hostile subjugator and robber."[10]

In extreme circumstances this can lead to "marital disturbances." In case like this,  Neumann says, "The alienation from men or hostility toward men prevailing in her often makes an inner relationship to a man impossible and thus becomes a source of frigidity, among other troubles." Neumann relates this to the myth of Amazons: "[M]yth relates that the Amazons used men only for begetting children. In these constellations women preserve the unity of the Amazonian women's group while they relate to the Masculine and to the man as toward something alien, in part hostile, in part "wholly other." Among the negative effects of this phase we also find a situation in which the woman experiences herself masochistically as sufferer, and consequently she reduces the Masculine and men to the level of mere sadists."[11]

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Devaluation of the Masculine influence

In discussing the Men's societies, I described how they are inevitably associated with devaluation of the Feminine influence. (See the section entitled "Great Mother Versus Great Father at the S Level" in the Sensing chapter and the supplemental essay "Men's societies" that is linked there.) But the same kind of devaluation of the Masculine occurs in the matriarchal clan: "In the matriarchy--that is, under the hegemony of the Great Mother--the Masculine can be experienced only in a diminished form. [...] The male is loved as child and as youth and used as her tool of fertility, but he continues to be integrated in and subordinated to the Feminine, and his authentic masculine being and uniqueness is never acknowledged."[12]

Also, in the supplemental essay entitled "Devaluation and Objectification" (linked in the "Sexuality Versus Spirituality" section of the Sensing chapter), I described at length the mutual devaluation of the sexes and said that men tend to sexualize women while women tend to "commodify" men. I don't think either sex is better or worse in this regard; it's just the nature of the S level, which is part of the developmental path of all humans. As we mature, we move beyond these simplistic ways of viewing the opposite sex. But under a variety of circumstances these old attitudes can pop up and guide our thinking, especially when we are floating along on auto-pilot and don't have any particular reason to weigh our words and actions in great detail.

In other words, these attitudes don't intrinsically represent a form of pathology or mental illness. In normal day-to-day life both men and women naturally view each other through the prism of their own agendas; what matters is that both sides should be able to move beyond their private agendas and find common ground with others as needed.

To sum up: The Se Nurturer is a fighter, a lover, and a full partner in her relationships. But relationships are built upon reciprocal altruism, and alliances may only be temporary; the matriarchal orientation of Nurturers may cause them to favor a maternal point of view to such a great extent that they devalue and exclude the Masculine.

In a separate essay I will discuss how females can demonstrate a patriarchal orientation, in other words, where they may favor a paternal point of view to such a great extent that they devalue and exclude the Feminine influence.

Matriarchal castration and Great Mother fights

Of course, either sex can drift into periods of stress, anxiety, depression, personal crises, etc. and fall into various states of "matriarchal castration" in increasingly severe forms. I described this phenomenon at length as it appears in the Se Champion. Matriarchal castration operates in much the same way for women as for men; women can be haunted by a "daemonic father," and stubborn cases of matriarchal castration tend to trigger a Great Mother fight. See the section entitled "The Se Champion" in the Sensing chapter for more on that subject.

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Link: Return to Sensing (S)

~Posted September 3, 2024

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