Somewhat related to the icky matter of the "patriarchy in western societies" mentioned in the previous post. Psychologist gives us a rundown on WASPy male mindset in that century. For those that take psychology seriously, the excerpt here might offer an explanation for the phenomenon related in the previous post.
As much as I loathe psychology in general (except for occasionally finding it a source of unexpected amusement on seeing how pathetically it "diagnoses" all that's really straightforward), I do not want to deprive Americans the right to diagnose their own WASPies in this way. I mean, although their methods of psychology and psycho-analysis are a dismal failure when applied to Hindus and Hinduism, who is to say that it might not be perfectly applicable to WASPies?
(Back when they were both the observers and observees, WASPies appear to have been among the originals around whom the field of psychology was designed anyway - in the English-speaking world, I mean... Therefore, although the shoe made for them certainly doesn't fit us, it may well fit them...) Am being a bit sarcastic here, but I'll let it stand. Of course I do not agree that such an evaluation of the western male - as follows below - applies universally to all American males of the 19th century. At least, I can't believe such a thing. I personally know of some exceptions in this century and have fortunately never met any resembling a descendent of the "rule" discussed below. But then, the "rule" speaks of <i>WASPy</i> America, so it may still hold for those that fit the bill...
WASP = "white anglo-saxon protestant"
The following article is a critique of a male(?) feminist's psych evaluation of American (WASPy) men of the 19th century. We can dismiss the critique itself (if only in imitation of Wendy and her Spawn dismissing our protestations against their defamation of Hindus and Hinduism). Hence, am only pasting the part that summarises the work being critiqued.
Oh and one more thing: the following illustrates a comparatively benign application of the western field of "psychology". The malignant form was reserved for Hindus.
<b>Review: Man Amuck</b> by Anita Clair Fellman; Michael Fellman, Reviewed Work(s): <i>The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century American.</i> by G. J. Barker-Benfield, Reviews in American History, Vol. 4, No. 4. (Dec., 1976), pp. 558-564.
(<i>Reviews in American History</i> is currently published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->With Barker-Benfield's introductory quotation from R. D. Laing that every aspect of man's being "is related to every other aspect" (p. xiii), one might have assumed that he would be dealing with the reciprocal relationship between the nineteenth-century American <b>WASP</b> male psyche and its setting, that he would show the ways in which the setting helped form that psyche and in which the psychological needs of individuals led to attempts to shape the human environment.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The universal male ambivalence toward women was sharpened and heightened, Barker-Benfield argues, in democratic America, where the anxieties generated by extreme competitiveness and drive for success between males deprived of intense ties with their fathers, made men fearful of the restrictiveness of women and family life, and endlessly insistent upon the necessity of sexual demarcation. In the absence of other accepted hierarchies (except race) "the sexual distinction was the only one guaranteed a man" (p. 40). In their atomization, American men could make no real ties with women, so caught up were they in the engrossing combat with their brothers that consumed all their carefully marshaled but nevertheless always insufficient energies. Because democratic societies robbed fathers of any significant authority, nineteenth-century American males never had to rebel against their fathers and so remained perpetual adolescents, responding to women only as mothers.
No option other than marriage existed for American women, and marriage meant confinement to the home, about which American men were both pious and distrustful. Once there, the carefree American girl disciplined herself to absorb the domestic and parental responsibilities ignored by the striving husband, becoming the worn-out creature that Tocqueville described. The irony was that she was trained to choose voluntarily a situation in which she was profoundly unfree. This "willing resignation" of women into "a kind of life demanded of them by another group" (p. 44) is indicative to Barker-Benfield of the ways in which nineteenth-century American women gave themselves up to other male fantasies, desires, and definitions. Such an assumption enables the author to draw conclusions about women's lives and feelings solely from the framework of the male psyches that he attempts to reconstruct.
In their passion for autonomy, American males feared and resented their origins in the female body. Even while they were creating a separate sphere for women and a role for them as men's comforters and supporters, they were beset with a guilty fear of their dependence upon women; their "need for total autonomy was an impassioned reaction to that fear of total dependence" (p. 215). Further troubling them was the awareness that even as women were ostensibly giving of themselves, they were, in fact, feeding off of men, sucking them dry of money, time, energy, will, and semen. Women were "insatiable consumers" of male resources, and consequently men were in danger of being depleted of their manhood and of becoming "unmanly, passive, and dependent, like women" (p. 305).
In explaining how nineteenth-century American males worked out their position vis-a-vis women, Barker-Benfield ties in these preoccupations to two broader currents in Western thought: vitalist theories of limited human energy and the dualist division of mindbody. Men, who because of their gender were responsible for the progress and activity of human society, had only a finite degree of energy for the tasks they were compelled to face if they were to succeed. Consequently they could not let themselves be drained by the demands of women. It was essential to husband their resources rather than to spend them on women. It followed that nineteenth-century American males were often ambivalent, even basically negative about heterosexual activity, a signal which their womenfolk picked up and transposed into reluctance to bear children. This spermatic economy, as Barker-Benfield calls it, was linked to the mindbody dualism by "proto-sublimation." If the body's powers were directed toward one organ, then they would be withdrawn from the rest of the body. The rightful master of the body was the mind, which could either expend itself in monitoring a dissipated body or could pursue its "own further activities, the pursuit of success" (p. 178). The body was the passive female principle, and the mind, the active male. By disciplining themselves to direct energies to the combative, conquering mind (proto-sublimation), men could thereby escape women and ensure success.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Make of it what you will. Am entirely entertained. (By the psychology.)
As much as I loathe psychology in general (except for occasionally finding it a source of unexpected amusement on seeing how pathetically it "diagnoses" all that's really straightforward), I do not want to deprive Americans the right to diagnose their own WASPies in this way. I mean, although their methods of psychology and psycho-analysis are a dismal failure when applied to Hindus and Hinduism, who is to say that it might not be perfectly applicable to WASPies?
(Back when they were both the observers and observees, WASPies appear to have been among the originals around whom the field of psychology was designed anyway - in the English-speaking world, I mean... Therefore, although the shoe made for them certainly doesn't fit us, it may well fit them...) Am being a bit sarcastic here, but I'll let it stand. Of course I do not agree that such an evaluation of the western male - as follows below - applies universally to all American males of the 19th century. At least, I can't believe such a thing. I personally know of some exceptions in this century and have fortunately never met any resembling a descendent of the "rule" discussed below. But then, the "rule" speaks of <i>WASPy</i> America, so it may still hold for those that fit the bill...
WASP = "white anglo-saxon protestant"
The following article is a critique of a male(?) feminist's psych evaluation of American (WASPy) men of the 19th century. We can dismiss the critique itself (if only in imitation of Wendy and her Spawn dismissing our protestations against their defamation of Hindus and Hinduism). Hence, am only pasting the part that summarises the work being critiqued.
Oh and one more thing: the following illustrates a comparatively benign application of the western field of "psychology". The malignant form was reserved for Hindus.
<b>Review: Man Amuck</b> by Anita Clair Fellman; Michael Fellman, Reviewed Work(s): <i>The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century American.</i> by G. J. Barker-Benfield, Reviews in American History, Vol. 4, No. 4. (Dec., 1976), pp. 558-564.
(<i>Reviews in American History</i> is currently published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->With Barker-Benfield's introductory quotation from R. D. Laing that every aspect of man's being "is related to every other aspect" (p. xiii), one might have assumed that he would be dealing with the reciprocal relationship between the nineteenth-century American <b>WASP</b> male psyche and its setting, that he would show the ways in which the setting helped form that psyche and in which the psychological needs of individuals led to attempts to shape the human environment.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The universal male ambivalence toward women was sharpened and heightened, Barker-Benfield argues, in democratic America, where the anxieties generated by extreme competitiveness and drive for success between males deprived of intense ties with their fathers, made men fearful of the restrictiveness of women and family life, and endlessly insistent upon the necessity of sexual demarcation. In the absence of other accepted hierarchies (except race) "the sexual distinction was the only one guaranteed a man" (p. 40). In their atomization, American men could make no real ties with women, so caught up were they in the engrossing combat with their brothers that consumed all their carefully marshaled but nevertheless always insufficient energies. Because democratic societies robbed fathers of any significant authority, nineteenth-century American males never had to rebel against their fathers and so remained perpetual adolescents, responding to women only as mothers.
No option other than marriage existed for American women, and marriage meant confinement to the home, about which American men were both pious and distrustful. Once there, the carefree American girl disciplined herself to absorb the domestic and parental responsibilities ignored by the striving husband, becoming the worn-out creature that Tocqueville described. The irony was that she was trained to choose voluntarily a situation in which she was profoundly unfree. This "willing resignation" of women into "a kind of life demanded of them by another group" (p. 44) is indicative to Barker-Benfield of the ways in which nineteenth-century American women gave themselves up to other male fantasies, desires, and definitions. Such an assumption enables the author to draw conclusions about women's lives and feelings solely from the framework of the male psyches that he attempts to reconstruct.
In their passion for autonomy, American males feared and resented their origins in the female body. Even while they were creating a separate sphere for women and a role for them as men's comforters and supporters, they were beset with a guilty fear of their dependence upon women; their "need for total autonomy was an impassioned reaction to that fear of total dependence" (p. 215). Further troubling them was the awareness that even as women were ostensibly giving of themselves, they were, in fact, feeding off of men, sucking them dry of money, time, energy, will, and semen. Women were "insatiable consumers" of male resources, and consequently men were in danger of being depleted of their manhood and of becoming "unmanly, passive, and dependent, like women" (p. 305).
In explaining how nineteenth-century American males worked out their position vis-a-vis women, Barker-Benfield ties in these preoccupations to two broader currents in Western thought: vitalist theories of limited human energy and the dualist division of mindbody. Men, who because of their gender were responsible for the progress and activity of human society, had only a finite degree of energy for the tasks they were compelled to face if they were to succeed. Consequently they could not let themselves be drained by the demands of women. It was essential to husband their resources rather than to spend them on women. It followed that nineteenth-century American males were often ambivalent, even basically negative about heterosexual activity, a signal which their womenfolk picked up and transposed into reluctance to bear children. This spermatic economy, as Barker-Benfield calls it, was linked to the mindbody dualism by "proto-sublimation." If the body's powers were directed toward one organ, then they would be withdrawn from the rest of the body. The rightful master of the body was the mind, which could either expend itself in monitoring a dissipated body or could pursue its "own further activities, the pursuit of success" (p. 178). The body was the passive female principle, and the mind, the active male. By disciplining themselves to direct energies to the combative, conquering mind (proto-sublimation), men could thereby escape women and ensure success.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Make of it what you will. Am entirely entertained. (By the psychology.)