Men, Women and Cars

Theodor Reik 2 observes that the room or the house is unconsciously felt by every woman as the extension of her own body. This representative value has its most valid reason in the structure and the function of woman's body-that of carrying and bearing children. And so her home represents her true self physically extended, the continuation of her own body. Therefore, women are very much interested in making their homes not only comfortable, but also beautiful. Men, on the other hand, are interested in practical home comfort but seldom are extremely concerned about the appearance of their quarters.

Yet an impressive parallel may be found between the man's interest in his car and the woman's interest in her house. Just as the woman feels the room as a projection of her true self, the man often unconsciously feels the car as a continuation of his body. And this representative value of the car has valid reasons both in the physical characteristics of the body of the man and in society's conception of the masculine character. Man's natural superiority of physical strength and his active rather than passive sexual role, together with the consequent roles of competitor for the mate and defender of the family, underlie the deep-rooted masculine ideal of physical strength.

The car is like a living, autonomous thing-a body. It places at the driver's disposal strength and fleetness equalling that of some primitive gods. Once he masters driving skills, with the unconscious reflex-like action of most operations, the driver may experience the responses of the car as his will extended, the car as the self. The car may now express his attitudes and feelings as surely as his own physical behavior.

Interestingly, the capacity to experience the car as the self seems to be unevenly divided between the sexes and among the occupational classes. Most women seem never to equal men in either the degree of unconscious identification of the car with the self or in the degree of automaticity in d