eric neumann was a student of jung, which is enough reason to not read him. but i didn’t know that till i was half way through the commentary so i finished it anyway despite all the absolute horseshit.
neumann’s analysis seems to come from a place of idealism. he engages not at all with the culture from which the story originates, nor the culture in which he exists, and spends no time working to grasp the role that patriarchy plays materially, culturally, and instead spends his time working towards an understanding of patriarchy and matriarchy as simply psychological.
the result is, as usually happens with psych analysis / psych therapy that does not revolve around material, a work that lacks any meaningful power or insight, and which reifies the culture and beliefs which neumann already had. to quote neumann: “…the patriarchal mysteries are upper and heavenly, while those of the feminine seem lower and chthonian…” neumann claims that they are complementary, and it is only through their “collaboration” that they will make progress.
it is odd to me to read a book that attempts to analyze the “psychic development of the feminine” fails completely to engage with the materiality of the feminine. despite the fact that psyche’s sisters are enslaved to wealthy men and are forced to live a life of constant labor for the sake of their father & their husbands, neumann says that they are exhibiting jealousy that is innate to femininity when they are jealous of psyche’s marriage of a man who treats her well. neumann misses here one of the primary facts of patriarchal standards: women are taught to see each other as competition, as enemies, in order to obfuscate the role that the men have in their struggle. similarly, women are taught to see their suffering as the result of an individual man, (as though if you had a better husband you would be less subject to the patriarchy) and not as the result of a system that has been built specifically for the oppression of women.
similarly, neumann accounts for aphrodite’s jealousy of psyche as being a feminine jealousy, one that comes from the matriarchate. this is despite the fact that there is no matriarchate, no matriarchy to speak of. neumann speaks of the gods of rome and greece as though there is a twofold, fully equalized power structure in which the women have established a matriarchy and the men have established a patriarchy and they are (as said above) complementary to each other. this is immensely, painfully, obviously wrong. the gods maintain a patriarchal power structure in which zeus is the god-king leader. this is even demonstrated at the end of the myth when amor requests permission from zeus to marry psyche despite aphrodite’s wishes. (the patriarchal standards are further cemented here when zeus agrees only if amor agrees to make any women fall in love with zeus when zeus requests it).
it seems to me that neumann, leveraged a burgeoning psychological tradition to reify the beliefs of the dominant culture, and through this lens, attempted to identify internal mechanisms that justified the structure of the society. i feel no qualms in saying that this is a work of bullshit, that neumann doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and that this is a work of pure misogyny.
i suspect that one of the reasons neumann chose to write about a roman myth is his hope that if he can prove the existence of these beliefs, of these structures, of the patriarchal and matriarchal complement, in antiquity, then he will be able to provide a more firm base for this being an internal (and thus eternal) system. that is, that if neumann can show that the development of the feminine behaved in such and such way 2000 years ago, and that the development of the feminine behaves in such and such way in his day, then he can argue that this is a naturally occurring phenomena, that his beliefs are reflective of a truth of human nature.
it is obvious to me, and hopefully to you as well, that since its inception, the patriarchy has actively attempted to establish itself as a natural way of being. biblically, socially, culturally, philosophically, scientifically, at each corner we see the patriarchy demanding that these systems agree: it is natural, healthy, and normal for women to submit to men. this is clearly exclusively for the benefit of men and the detriment of women.
don’t read this book it fucking sucks.