Conference hydra::dejavu

{From: "Androgyny", by June Singer, 1977}

Introduction - by Sheldon S. Hendler

	'Strange is our situation here upon earth.  Each of us comes
	 for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming
	 to divine a purpose.'
					- Albert Einstein

In 'Androgyny' June Singer shares with us the purpose she has divined. 
"Our task", she tells us, "is to become conscious of the manner in 
which we exist within the cosmic scheme."  To accomplish this we must 
explore the grounds of our opinions.  In so doing, we enter the 
process of becoming conscious of the many aspects of our selves, of 
who we really are, not what we are supposed to be.  in becoming 
conscious, we gain awareness of the dualities that have molded our 
psyches: activity-passivity, competition-co-operation, independence - 
dependence, logic-intuition, and many more.  

There is one duality, however, that appears to be the generator of all 
psychic dualities, that of male-female.  Dr. Singer, as a practicing 
analyst, is concerned with healing or making whole.  For her the 
resolution of our psychic dualities is not in combat between them, but 
in active loving of each of the other, the state of Androgyny.

There is an age-old tendency to establish one side of a duality as 
being good or superior or primary, and the other as evil or inferior or 
secondary.  The left hand is the sinister, wrong or bad one.  The 
right hand, the good one.  Mythologies and religions abound in the 
patriarchal and matriarchal models to explain the Creation, as Dr. 
Singer tells us.  We find these splits in science as well.  Shortly 
after the human sperm was seen by Hamm and Leeuwenhoek in 1677 for the 
first time, two opposing camps emerged with explanations regarding its 
role in the creation of the child.  One side argued that the sperm 
contained the child in miniature (the Homunculus) and the role of the 
ovum was only to nourish it.  The other side believed that the ovum 
contained such a miniature and the role of the sperm was merely as a 
stimulant to its development.  The arguments were vicious.  It took 
many years before Spallanzani showed that *both* were necessary.

The unexamined tendency to seek polar dominance has fostered sexism, 
racism, ageism, fascism and probably all of the splits that have 
produced discontent, agony, bloodshed and an infinitude of unfulfilled 
souls.  What a wondrous place this planet would be if man and woman, 
black and white, old and young could value and love each other, not as 
objects, but as participants on the same cosmic journey.  Singer 
admonishes us to explore our own psyches, examine the elements that 
are warring against each other, heal ourselves, and make ourselves 
whole and become androgynous.  We have been witnessing in the last few 
years the emergence of many people with the courage to explore 
honestly the dualities that have split humanity for too long a time.  
...

Androgyny is not just a temporary solution to contemporary problems.
It is much more than this.  For Dr. Singer, as was true for C.G. Jung, 
a psychic truth recapitulates a cosmic one.  If Androgyny is a cosmic 
truth, it must have been revealed many times, in many different ways 
and in many different places.  On a journey that takes us through the 
Tao, Gnosticism, the Kabbalah, Alchemy, Astrology, Tibetan Tantra, 
Kundalini Yoga, Plato, Freud and Jung, Singer demonstrates the key 
role that the archetype of Androgyny has played throughout all of 
recorded history.  We even find in the first chapter of Genesis, as 
did Singer, when she as Augustine long before her was urged to take up 
and read, that God created male _and_ female in his own image, that of 
an androgyne.  ...

[For the purposes of this topic and the conference, I will do my best
to only quote from the Bible. - CP]

Growing up in the 1940's, I was bathed in all the stereotypes of that 
time.  Looking back at some of my drawings from that period, I find 
Superman appearing in many of them, also gangsters, cowboys and an 
occasional naked woman; the heroes and heroines of the American 
landscape.  I remember some pretty heavy arguments between my mother 
and father as to what activities their only child should be engaged 
in.  My mother stressed intellectual and cultural pursuits.  My father 
thought that I should be playing ball, boxing, not spending so much 
time reading.  He didn't want me to become a sissy.  I didn't 
understand those arguments because I didn't see why a book and a ball 
were enemies.

When I got out on the street I found that my father's advice was well 
taken.  I couldn't be one of the boys unless I played ball with them.  
And so I did play ball, ran a little track, and even became sports 
editor of my high school newspaper.  But I also read, studied music, 
learned how to play the trumpet and compose music, wrote poetry and 
drew pictures.

Playing the trumpet was very important to me.  Music was soft and 
feminine.  But the trumpet was loud , very masculine.  For me, looking 
back at it now, playing the trumpet was attempting to unite the 
masculine and feminine polarities within my psyche.  I loved jazz; 
Charlie Parker became my idol.  He looked very strong, very masculine, 
no one could accuse him of being a sissy.  But the music that emerged 
from his saxophone was in the form of the most beautiful of all women.

(to be continued)

{From: "Androgyny", by June Singer, 1977}

Introduction - by Sheldon S. Hendler  (cont'd)

In hindsight, I realize that what was going on within me was the 
differentiation and development of the various polarities of my 
psyche, especially that of masculine-feminine, the constant struggle 
to prevent one side gaining dominance and the selection of a way to 
conjoin these polarities.  But I was tormented.  There were some who 
remarked at the seemingly very different activities that I was 
involved in, but most people couldn't understand me, and what was even 
worse, I couldn't understand myself.  [Ah yes - I can relate - CP]

In the early 1960s I began a serious study of biochemistry.  Science 
had always fascinated for me for its logic as well as its magic.  I 
was drawn to biochemistry because I felt that it would lead me to some 
important truths.

For most, science is thought to be the ultimate expression of logic.  
However, science is a human activity produced by human beings.  The 
message of 'Androgyny' is that the human psyche is comprised of many 
different dualities that must be kept in balance in order for the 
individual to be whole, to be truly human.  Both logic _and_ intuition 
must work together, must love each other, in the development and 
differentiation of a human being.  Thus, it follows that the most 
human science is produced by the Androgyne.  Albert Szent-Gyoergyi 
says it well, "Research is rarely guided by logic.  It is guided 
mostly by hunches, guesses and intuition.  All the same, once we get 
somewhere and present our results, we like to present them as a 
logical sequence.  If the course of our work had to be plotted, we 
would plot it as the straight line."

It is unfortunate that science has been confused with technological 
feats that the century has witnessed: bombs that are capable of the 
complete annihilation of life on this planet, devices that can invade 
our most intimate moments along with all of those things that 
admittedly have improved the quality of our lives.  This is one side 
of science.  What follows is a sketch of what has come out of the 
musings by men and women of science.

Science, as does mythology and religion, asks the question, where did 
it all begin.  And why shouldn't it?  The practitioners of science, as 
well as the makers of myths and religions, are all humans.  The 
question about creation is a human question.  The child who asks where 
he came from is taking his first steps in becoming a human being.  
Later he will ask why he is here.  (And *she* also wonders.....)

Cosmologists believe that our Universe was born about fifteen thousand 
million years ago from a super-hot super-condensed core of matter, in 
a violent explosion that has become known as the "big bang". ... This 
is the beginning of scientific time and as far back as we can go.  
Science has no answers as to what existed before this event.  it is 
the state that is "Darker than any Mystery/The Doorway whence issued 
all Secret Essences" of Taoism; the formless and void state of the Old 
Testament; the Unknowable which could not be named of the Kabbalah.

All the elements that now occupy the Universe formed from this 
explosion at the beginning of time, and space itself, was created 
from he expansion of the original core of matter.  The heat of the 
explosion still bathes the Universe.  Thus, an "unknowable" source of 
energy created matter, time, space and life.  We could call this 
Genesis.

The elements that are the units of all matter are comprised of three 
basic particles; protons and neutrons, which determine their mass; and 
electrons which determine their chemical reactivity.  However, only 
two of these particles, protons and neutrons, were probably necessary 
for their creation.  The primordial cosmic soup was most likely made of 
primarily of neutrons.  A free neutron may decay into a positive 
proton by shedding a negative electron.  When the clock started 
ticking the neutrons split into protons and electrons; and the first 
element, hydrogen, which to this day is the most abundant one in the 
Universe, was born.  Subsequently, protons and neutrons interacted to 
produce the first isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, and then the second 
element, helium.

These light elements drifted around in space and occasionally 
coalesced into molecules and small particles of dust and gas.  Further 
condensation created clouds, which in time became massive enough to 
generate a new physical process, gravity.  Gravity, in turn, caused 
these clouds to contract and turned them into stars, which themselves 
gave rise to new elements, light and the seeds to produce new 
'children' in other parts of the Universe.  When the Universe was ten 
thousand million years old, a family emerged from this process, which 
we named the solar system.  A sibling of this family, Earth, was born 
about five thousand million years ago.  This child of the cosmos, 
heavily endowed with the alchemy of much time, was born with a dense 
core, covered with a dust and water and later an atmosphere of steam, 
methane, ammonia, nitrogen and carbon dioxide.  It was heated by the 
sun, and it crackled with thunder and lightening.

[Please bear with me - this will come together in the next couple of 
notes, but the stage must be set first. - CP]

(to be continued)

{From: "Androgyny", by June Singer, 1977}

Introduction (continued)

Roughly two thousand million years after the birth of our planet 
another explosion occurred which have meaning to everything that 
happened before; a cry of life.  This may not have been the first 
place this blessed event occurred, and it may have happened afterward 
in other places.  But, wherever and whenever it happened, its 
significance was the same.

We have come now from the beginning of time to the origin of life on 
this planet.  From a neutron, which is two particles in one, we have 
produced the first life form.  The concept of the Two in the One is 
the essence of the Archetype of Androgyny.

Let's return to that time just before the first living organism 
appeared on this planet, the so-called prebiological period.  During 
this period the interactions of the various molecules that existed in 
the atmosphere driven by the energy of the sun's rays and lightening 
produced some molecules that were washed into the waters to create 
other molecules, among which were two kinds called amino acids and 
nucleosides.  The amino acids and nucleosides became seasoned by the 
salts of the earth's waters, and in an unknown process the nucleosides 
polymerized to form nucleic acids and the amino acids are the 'two' 
most important molecules of life.  For many years researchers have 
been asking themselves which came first, the proteins or the nucleic 
acids.  Again, we come face to face with a question of priorities; the 
egg or the sperm.

Nucleic acids and proteins is the basic complementarity of Life.  The 
language of nucleic acids would be unknowable were it not for the 
proteins.  The proteins are the translation of this language, and the 
two together make life possible.  It is unlikely that in the formation 
of life one preceded the other.  Both were necessary.  Indeed, it is 
possible that this molecule, which was the direct ancestor of the 
first living organism, was a combination of nucleic acid and protein, 
the Two in the One.

The first living organisms lived in waters devoid of oxygen.  These 
organisms were single-celled creatures, probably somewhat similar to 
our bacteria.  They did not have very much internal organization, no 
nuclei, no mitochondria; in fact, none of the organelles that we know 
to exist within our own cells.  however, if we knew them, we would say 
they were alive because they had all the qualities we assign to life.  
They moved, they replicated, they breathed, they ate, they reacted, 
they even may have remembered.  In time some of these creatures 
evolved into organisms that created oxygen from the waters.  This new 
gas seemed to stimulate some of the creatures to want to make more 
contact with each other.

This made good sense.  For just as oxygen is essential for our life, 
this gas was a poison for those earliest dwellers on the planet.  The 
introduction of this gas posed the danger of their extinction.  
Extreme cleverness was required for their survival.  Some sought out 
niches where this gas was not present, but others colonized to convert 
this poison into nourishment.  The later choice resulted in the 
evolution of a single-celled community made up of some very different 
bedfellows.  It is this single-celled community that became the 
prototype of the cells within our own bodies as well as that of all 
the animals and most of the plants.  The mitochondria of our cells, 
which are responsible for producing the energy to throw a ball or 
write a poem, are themselves descendants of those distant primordial 
life forms that needed _togetherness_ to go on.  [Hmmmmm....! - CP]

I have taken some license in the above two paragraphs to present a 
hypothesis called the symbiont hypothesis of the origin of eucaryotic 
cells from procaryotic cells.  I find this concept to be one of the 
most attractive, and I believe, important ones in biology in the last 
decade.  Previous to the presentation of this concept one theory 
dominated our thinking about the origin of new life forms, the 
well-known theory that new species arise as a result of the selective 
advantages that their genetic endowment confers on them in the 
gathering of the harvest.  This theory, of fundamental significance in 
our understanding of evolutionary mechanisms, stressed the importance 
of competition among species for their survival.  The new concept 
suggests as an alternative mechanism co-operative interactions in the 
development of new life forms.  As such, both co-operation and 
competition appear fundamental in the process of change.  The leading 
proponent of this new hypothesis is Dr. Lynn Margulis, a woman whose 
intellectual contributions are the fruit of her successful dialogue 
between intuition and logic.

(to be continued)
           

{From: "Androgyny", by June Singer, 1977}

Introduction (last part...)

We find many examples of Yin and Yang in biology.  In all cases for 
the proper functioning of the organism, the opposites must exist in a 
dynamic and harmonious relationship with each other.  If one becomes 
permanently dominant, then the organism is in trouble.  The proper 
functioning of our neuromuscular system requires a dynamic balance 
between the sensory part and the motor part.  Carbon dioxide and 
oxygen must exist in such a balance for the respiratory system to 
function correctly.  The regulation of our heart beat depends on the 
appropriate balance of inputs from the sympathetic and parasympathetic 
parts of our autonomic nervous system.  

Recently, there has been much interest in the possible regulation of
cellular growth by two opposing factors.  One of these factors appears
to inhibit cellular growth and is called cyclic adenosine
monophosphate.  The other, which appears to have stimulated cell
growth, is called cyclic guanosine monophosphate.  Both of these
factors need to exist in a dynamic harmonious relationship for healthy
cellular growth.  There is evidence that in cancer the relationship
between these factors becomes one-sided with cyclic guanosine
monophosphate playing the dominant role. 

In the course of the evolution of the Universe, beginning from the 
union of all matter, there arose and entity on this planet that began 
to contemplate the meaning of it all, the human mind.  This event, I 
believe, to be the third major explosion in time and as significant as 
the origin of the Universe and the origin of life.  It is also as 
mysterious.  It is exactly at the bridges between the 'void' and 
creation of matter, between non-life and life, and between no-mind and 
mind that the greatest mysteries are found and where most important 
meanings lie.

So-called primitive man undoubted wondered where he came from.  We 
know that his brain was not that different from our own.  When the 
child first asks the question where he comes from, he takes his first 
steps on the journey in becoming human.  He recapitulates in the 
pondering about his origins the leap of early man into human history.  
The question is the origin from which will evolve his beliefs about 
the meaning of life and his relationship to the world in which he 
lives.  Likewise, for early man, it was the starting point for 
mythology, religion, philosophy, art and science.  

The child learns that he (and she) was created by the coming together
of a male and a female in intimate union.  The awe with which the
child greets this revelation cannot be different from what early man
must have felt.  The awe is evidenced in our mythologies.  The world
itself was created by union between male and female divinities. 
However, man's mind is not excluded from the evolutionary process. 
Just as the original condensed core of matter evolved to yield all our
elements, and as the original life forms evolved to the multitudinous
form of life on this planet, so has there been an evolution in man's
ideas about the origin of the world and his place in it. 

Astronomy taught us that there are other worlds besides our own.  
Copernicus showed us that our world is not the center of the Universe. 
That man is a product of evolution from other life forms is the 
legacy of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace.  It is conceivable 
now that life exists elsewhere in the Universe.  We know about atoms, 
molecules and cells and can even duplicate some of the feats of Nature 
in our laboratories.  When we now project our intellectual landscape 
onto the Universe in probing for answers about origin, we project a 
landscape that is much different from that of early man.  But we must 
never forget our debt to early man because it was he who started the 
explosion that still heats the cauldron of our minds.

It is hard for those of us who have eaten the apple of science to 
accept the thought that our creation was divine.  If indeed the apple 
was not given to us by a serpent, it has helped us reveal the nature 
of the serpent that contains the message of life, DNA.  Further it has 
helped us discover that although this serpent is as multitudinous as 
the life forms that contain it,, each and every form of life reads the 
message of life in exactly the same way.  The creation of a life form 
we call man is not unique, but the creation of life certainly is, 
irrespective if life exists only on this planet or elsewhere in the 
Universe.  Man was probably not put on this planet as a divine 
creation, but life is certainly divine.  

We are really brothers and sisters not only with fellow human beings,
but with all that lives, all that has ever lived and all that will
live.  I don't find this thought disturbing.  Nor does it deny me of
any specialness.  Quite the contrary.  My wife and I have been married
for 16 years and for a good number of them have been trying to 
conceive a child without any success.  One month after my mother died 
in the beginning of this year, in an act of love, our first child was 
conceived.  The message was clear.  Life is continuous.  And as we 
must think of life in its totality, so we must think of mind in its 
totality.  The landscapes within our heads are different, our words 
are different, but we as did original man still ask how it all began.  
When we explore the deepest recesses of our heads with courage and 
honesty, when we review the mythologies of creation with the new words 
and new concepts that have evolved in human history, when we really 
understand what the creative process is - whether it be science or art 
- when we ask ourselves what it is that really makes sense, we come up 
again and again with one overwhelming message. 

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin expressed it thus:

	"Everything in the Universe is made by union and generation -
	 by coming together of elements that seek out one another,
	 melt together two by two, and are born again in a third."

Jacob Bronowski put it another way when talking about the actor:

	"I found the act of creation lie in the discovery of a
	 hidden likeness.  The scientist and the artist take 
	 two facts or experiences which are separate; he finds them
	 a likeness which had not been seen before; and he creates
	 a unity by showing the likeness."

And when we talk about the spectator:

	"The act of appreciation re-enacts the act of creation 
	 and we are (each of us) actors, we are interpreters of it."

I saw it written on a wall in a cathedral in Cuernavaca, Mexico:

	"Though God has never been seen by any man, God himself
	 dwells in us if we love one another."

In the act of creation, whether it be of the Universe or a poem, the 
conception of a child or the elaboration of the most profound 
scientific theory, there is always made the most intimate of all 
possible contacts between two different entities producing for just a 
fleeting moment of time a Blakean "fearful symmetry."  The intense 
energy generated by this close contact each time produces something 
new in the Universe.  In this way the long cosmic journey continues 
toward, I believe, the revelation of the Infinite, the "Unknowable".

Sheldon S. Hendler
laJolla, California - 1975

{From: "Androgyny", by June Singer, 1977, p.6-8}

Chapter 1

The theme of my writing presents itself in eidetic imagery.  The theme 
is androgyny, which in its broadest sense can be defined as the One 
which contains the Two; namely, the male (andro-) and the female 
(gyne).  Androgyny is an archetype inherent in the human psyche.  C.G. 
Jung has stated that his use of the term 'archetype' is an explanatory 
paraphrase of Plato's 'eidos', and this is the sense in which I am 
using it here.  The term 'archetype' is helpful in this context 
because it indicates the presence of an archaic or primordial type, a 
universal and collective image that has existed since the remotest 
times.  Archetypes give rise to images in primitive tribal lore, in 
myths and fairy tales, and in the contemporary media.  They are, by 
definition, unconscious; their presence can only be intuited in the 
powerful motifs and symbols that give definite form to psychic 
contents.

Androgyny is just such an archetype; it continually represents itself 
in myths and symbols, which have the capacity - if recognized and 
invoked - to energize the creative potency of men and women in ways 
that most people hardly imagine today.

Androgyny may be the oldest archetype of which we have any experience. 
 It derives from, and is second only to, the archetype of the 
Absolute, which is beyond the possibility of human experience and must 
remain forever unknowable.  The archetype of androgyny appears in us 
as an innate sense of a primordal cosmic unity, having existed in 
oneness or wholeness before any separation was made.  The human psyche 
is witness to the primordal unity; therefore, the psyche is the 
vehicle through which we can attain awareness of the awe-inspiring 
totality.

First, there is nothing in existence except the indescribable void, 
the ineffable nothingness.  Second comes the primordal unity, the One 
in which all opposites are contained, but not as yet differentiated.  
Like the yolk and the white in an egg, they are locked together, 
imprisoned and immovable.  When the appointed time comes the primordal 
unity is broken open; then there exist the Two, as opposites.  Only 
when the Two have become established as separate entities can they 
move apart and then join together in a new way to create the many and 
to disperse them.  In time, pairs of opposites tend to polarize.  The 
polarities are expressed in a variety of ways; for example - light and 
dark, positive and negative, eternal and temporal, hot and cold, 
spirit and matter, mind and body, art and science, war and peace.

One pair, male and female, serves as the symbolic expression of the 
energic power behind all of the other polarities.  It does not matter 
what the order, for as creating principles, one is invalid without the 
other.  For the part of creation to be engendered, the male and the 
female must come together in all their sexual maleness and femaleness. 
 Before they can be joined, they must first have been apart, 
differentiated, separated from one another.  Before they were 
separated they were bound together in one body, and that body was the 
Primordial Androgyne.

The idea of a Divine Androgyne is a consequence of the concept that 
Ultimate Being consists of a unity-totality.  Within this 
unity-totality are seen to exist all the conjoined pairs of opposites 
at all levels of potentiality.  Creation occurs when the cosmogonic 
egg is broken.  Then the world is born.  Or it occurs when male and 
female, having been incorporated in one spherical body, are separated 
by the supreme power of creation.  Cosmic energy is generated by the 
surge of longing in each one of the two for the other.

We have come to know the primal quality of the androgyne from its 
traces in the myths and legends of sacred traditions of many primitive 
peoples.  Ancient mythology abounds with tales of a time when the 
eternal male and the eternal female were locked in an unending 
embrace.  A Greek myth tells of a time - when out of Chaos were born 
Night and also Erebus, the unfathomable depth where Death dwelt.  From 
Darkness and from Death, Love was born, and from Love, Light.  Then 
Mother Earth emerged and lay in union with Father Sky.  There they 
remained for aeons in an unending embrace.  In other versions, 
Earth-Sky was seen as an androgynous deity.  This non-dual 
constitution of Primal Being, which contains within itself the 
potentialities of duality and multiplicity, has come down to us by way 
of the more sophisticated religions also, especially in elements of 
Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism, as well as in the Platonic traditions 
of the West.

[Now the moment you've all been waiting for.....]

The Androgyne has been nearly totally expunged from the Judeo-Christian 
tradition, for it apparently threatens the idea of a patriarchal 
God-image.  Male dominance has been the keystone of the 
Judeo-Christian civilization.  Our major institutions outside the home 
have been conceived and operated primarily by men, and they function 
according to certain kinds of principles and behavior that we commonly 
designate as "masculine".  Androgyny, however, corresponds more 
faithfully to the guiding human archetype than does the societal 
structure based on a dominantly patriarchal mode of functioning, with 
women in a subordinate role.  Despite the expunging, androgyny 
continues to assert itself - sometimes fiercely - despite all attempts 
to suppress it.

(to be continued)

{From: "Androgyny", by June Singer, 1977, p.6-8}

Chapter 1 (cont'd)

Androgyny refers to a specific way of joining the "masculine" and the 
"feminine" aspects of a single human being.  We see much evidence of 
the trend toward androgyny in our Western world today in social 
customs, manners and morals, and also in the awareness of millions of 
people who are searching out ways to expand their consciousness of 
themselves and the world in which they live.  The deeply moving spirit 
of androgyny is not yet obvious or familiar in our time and place, 
even though it is older than history itself.  Everywhere it has 
existed as the "hidden river".  It has nourished religion and 
literature.  From time to time it has emerged, sometime as the spring 
of a new idea, sometimes as a torrent of reaction against an 
overwhelmingly one-sided political situation.

Even in the Judeo-Christian culture androgyny has periodically come to 
light, but until now it has not gained sufficient understanding, and 
therefore strength, to reassume its original primacy over the 
patriarchal powers in our society.  The recent expansion of 
androgynous consciousness, brought about largely through the catalytic 
effect of the Women's Movement, has increased our awareness of the 
necessity for questioning the nearly impregnable fortress of 
male-oriented values [Not to mention 'pronouns' - CP (;^)]

The Woman's Movement has confronted us with the historic undermining 
of women and has challenged us to utilize the potency of the female in 
our society.  The Woman's Movement may turn out to be the decisive 
step in the direction of androgyny, inasmuch as it confronts directly 
some of the obstacles that lie in the path toward androgyny.  I am not 
sure that many women know where the path is leading, specifically in 
terms of their own inner development, but they are led on by the 
archetype deep in the psyche, the archetype which in its own way 
constructs reality as least as much as do the events in the external 
environment.

Only in the present century have women effectively begun to challenge 
this state of affairs on any large scale, although often in the past 
certain women held positions of power and influence in affairs of 
state.  Until recently, women's challenge to existing power structures 
had been of a token nature and had met with very limited success.  
Beginning, however, with the last half of the twentieth century, the 
assertiveness of some women has begun to make an impression.  Those 
women who have been freed from the most pressing of their domestic 
tasks, who have been afforded opportunities for good educations, and 
who have taken the option of deciding for themselves when and whether 
to bear children, have been able to turn some time and energy to the 
consideration of their condition as women.  Growing dissatisfaction 
with the subordinate role of women in our society has stimulated the 
contemporary feminist movement, with its goal of raising the level of 
freedom and opportunity for women closer to that of men.

Despite the gradual nature of the impact it is making now, the Women's 
Movement is revolutionary in nature.  Its aims are radical; its 
cutting edge is to enable women to conceive of herself as possessing 
the inner potential to become economically and spiritually 
independent.  The radical feminist of today recalls the mythic Amazon, 
a fearsome warrior who could defeat man at his own game.  The 
rationale of the Movement, as the more liberal wing recognizes, is 
that if women can get beyond a position of subservience to man, then 
she can then begin to relate to him in a much more satisfying way for 
both, and that is as an equal.  They say that the women of the coming 
era will be able to choose far more freely the ways in which she will 
participate in her relationships with men.  Indeed, this potential is 
already being realized by many women, especially by those who were 
born after the mid-century.

I am in touch with the collective and individual struggles of the 
feminist movement because for more than a decade I have been actively 
engaged in attempting to find my standpoint as a psychotherapist and 
as a women.  This includes defining myself in new ways.  Still, there 
is something about the feminist movement that makes me uncomfortable, 
even while I acknowledge with appreciation the many gains it has 
already made toward improving the status of women.  The Movement 
supports the independent position of women in contrast to her former 
position of subservience to man, but this often tends to polarize 
further the images we have now of the male and the female, and of 
"masculinity" and "femininity".  

The questions are no longer primarily about dominance and
subservience, but they are being transformed into questions of
politics, pressure groups and public relations.  A few women are
becoming more and more competent at what men have been doing for
centuries.  Some women are already arrogating themselves the
patriarchal model by attempting to be as much like men as it is
possible for women to be.  But there is a limit which beyond it cannot
work, for at some point a woman is basically different, and she feels
that difference as a tidal wave arising from within.  If she does not
heed it, it may eventually overwhelm her whole person. 

What the Women's Movement has already achieved, and what it is 
planning for the future, point to an improvement in the quality of 
life for millions of women and, it is hoped, for the men with whom 
they are involved.  The Movement represents a conversion from a 
situation in which woman was inevitably expected to be the compliant 
partner in a male-female relationship into one which woman need not be 
afraid to assert herself, her beliefs and her values.  But we must 
realize that a battle has been drawn - and for the next several years 
it is likely to be a violent struggle.