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This is a thoughtful and challenging book. The Jungian background of thought is obvious but it is chiefly addressed to readers without psychological knowledge and avoids the use of professional terminology. And yet it does not make easy reading as it is permeated with discursive feeling rather than pursuing a clear-cut argument. This manner of presentation, however, may have been intended as a fitting expression of feminine mentality.
The book's content may be summarized under three headings, although this approach hardly does justice to its charm of descriptive detail. The three headings are: woman as a function, not a person; modern woman's animus problem; and the ascendancy of feminine values in modern society.
What is woman in herself? Mrs. Scott-Maxwell elaborates a fact which has been recognized also by other writers on the subject (for instance Esther Harding), that woman's psychology is and remains based on her biological function as mate and as mother. What nature has given has been reinforced by social convention; woman has always lived primarily for and through others, and thus is singularly unaware of her personal identity. Her response to the needs, demands, and expectations of those around her becomes the substitute for her ego. She is therefore particularly dependent on the value that is given to her by others. Many implications of this feminine “formlessness” and “indefiniteness” are discussed. While woman lives blindly the pattern ordained by nature and convention, each one of her virtues may turn into its opposite: love into tyranny; caring into indulgence; selflessness into escape from self-knowledge. The surrender and yielding that are proverbially characteristic of woman tend to activate harshness and ruthlessness by way of compensation. It is urgently necessary that woman should develop an ego, in order that her instinctive reactions may cease to create good and bad indiscriminately.
As is obvious, birth control and emancipation from economic depe