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She!: A contribution to understanding feminine psychology: based on the myth of Amor and Psyche and using Jungian psychological concepts
1992 Delacorte Press; First Edition; Hardcover with Dust Jacket
92 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1976
2 people want to read
About the author
Robert A. Johnson
94 books826 followersRobert A. Johnson is a noted lecturer and Jungian analyst in private practice in San Diego, California. He has studied at the Jung Institute in Switzerland and at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India.
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November 14, 2025
THE SECOND OF JOHNSON’S ‘TRILOGY’ OF JUNGIAN INTERPRETATIONS
Robert Alex Johnson (1921-2018) was a Jungian analyst. This 1976 book follows up his 1974 book, ‘He: Understanding Masculine Psychology.’
He wrote in the Introduction, “The story of Amor and Psyche is one of the best elucidations available of the psychology of the feminine personality. It is an ancient, pre-Christian myth… Myths are rich sources of psychological insight. Great literature… portrays the human condition with indelible accuracy. Myths… are usually the product of the collective imagination and experience of an entire age and culture… A myth may be a fantasy; it may be a product of the imagination, but it is nonetheless true and real. It depicts levels of reality that include the outer rational world as well as the less understood inner world within the psyche of each individual.” (Pg. 1-2)
He recounts, “Let us begin with our story of Amor and Psyche. It seems that there was a kingdom… [with] a king and a queen, and they have three daughters. The two eldest daughters … are not very remarkable. The third daughter, who is named Psyche, is an extraordinary person… People have begun to say, ‘Here is the new Aphrodite. Here is a new goddess.’ Now Aphrodite was an age-old goddess of femininity… But people began saying that Psyche was taking her place… On the other hand, it was rumored that Psyche was born when a dewdrop fell from the sky upon the land… The difference between these two births … reveals the different natures of these two goddesses. Aphrodite is a goddess born out of the sea; she is a primeval, oceanic femininity… One can admire or worship… or one can go Psyche’s way of evolving to a new level of femininity. Those are the choices. Every women has an Aphrodite in her... her chief characteristics being vanity, conniving lust, fertility, and tyranny when she is crossed.” (Pg. 5-6)
He suggests, “Much of the turmoil for a modern woman is the collision between her Aphrodite nature and her Psyche nature. It may help her to have a framework for understanding the process because, if she can see what is happening, she is already well on her way to a new consciousness. Recognizing Aphrodite can be of great value to her. When a man can recognize Aphrodite in a woman and know what to do and what not to do, he is better off as well.” (Pg. 8)
He elaborates, “there is a Psyche in every woman, and it is intensely lonely… When a woman finds herself lonely and not understood, when she finds that people are good to her but stay just a little distance away, she has found the Psyche nature in her own person.” (Pg. 9)
He states, “Marriage is a totally different thing to a man than to a woman. The man is adding to his stature; his world is getting stronger and he has come up a peg. He generally does not understand that he is killing the Psyche in his newfound wife and that he has to… [Psyche] has everything one could wish. Her god-husband … extracts from her the promise that she will not inquire into any of his ways… she may live in her paradise, but she must not ask to know him. Nearly every man wants this of his wife… he wants the old patriarchal marriage, where the man decides all the important issues, the woman says yes to him and there is no trouble.” (Pg. 16)
He asserts, “Some women do experience love as the devouring dragon… Usually a man doesn’t understand this death-resurrection in a woman as he has no parallel to it in his own life. Marriage is not a sacrificial matter to a man, but that is its chief characteristic for a woman… a woman goes through a bewildering series of relationships with her husband. He is the god of love, and he is death at the top of the mountain.” (Pg. 21-22)
He notes, “A man depends largely on the woman for the light in the family, as he is often not very good at finding meaning for himself. Life is often dry and barren for him unless someone bestows meaning on life for him. With a few words a woman can give meaning to a whole day’s struggle, and a man will be very grateful.” (Pg. 26)
He explains, “We must differentiate between ‘loving’ and ‘being in love.’ … Loving another person is seeing that person truly and appreciating him for what he actually is: his ordinariness, his failures, and his magnificence… Loving is… seeing another person for the down-to-earth, practical, immediate experience that another human being is. Loving is not illusory. It is not seeing the other person in a particular role we have designed for him… Being in love is another matter… [It] is an intrusion… of an archetypal, a superpersonal, or a divine world. Suddenly one sees in one’s beloved a god or a goddess… a superpersonal, superconscious realm of being. All this is highly exposive and inflammatory, a divine madness.” (Pg. 30)
He says, “The masculine component in personality, in man and woman, deals primarily with the outer world, while the feminine component deals primarily with the inner world. A fine image of a marriage partnership is one in which the man and woman stand back to back, he is facing the outer world… and she the inner world… Ideally one might imagine the man and woman as two overlapping circles… Gradually, as the woman and the man each develop sufficiently their own capacities to face in both directions, the circles move together and the overlap is deeper.” (Pg. 48)
He suggests, “Modern man needs to give up his godlike assumption of unnatural power over nature and the destiny of the entire world. His Logos has led him into a fixation with power, into an inflated identification with the ram, and he is not an adequate carrier of that force. Just as a person who gets too close to an archetype is obliterated, a person identifying with the ram will also be destroyed.” (Pg. 52)
He observes, “Almost every woman I know has waded right our into the river and has been overwhelmed. Almost every woman I know is too busy. She is into this, studying that, driving in a car pool to this and to that, working hard on some big project, racing around until she is ragged. She needs to be quiet, to appreciate the vastness of life’s responsibilities in a more orderly manner, to do one thing, take one crystal goblet, at a time, concentrate on it, and do it well. Then she may move on to other things.” (Pg. 59)
He concludes, “I think possible the crowning achievement of femininity is to be able to bring joy, ecstasy, pleasure into life. A man values a woman so highly because she has just this capacity or power. Man cannot find this ecstasy alone without the aid of the feminine element, so they find it either in an outer woman or in their own inner woman. Joy is a gift from the heart of woman. It is a woman’s supreme privilege and development to be a bringer of joy…” (Pg. 70)
This book will probably mostly appeal to those attracted to Jungian psychology.
Robert Alex Johnson (1921-2018) was a Jungian analyst. This 1976 book follows up his 1974 book, ‘He: Understanding Masculine Psychology.’
He wrote in the Introduction, “The story of Amor and Psyche is one of the best elucidations available of the psychology of the feminine personality. It is an ancient, pre-Christian myth… Myths are rich sources of psychological insight. Great literature… portrays the human condition with indelible accuracy. Myths… are usually the product of the collective imagination and experience of an entire age and culture… A myth may be a fantasy; it may be a product of the imagination, but it is nonetheless true and real. It depicts levels of reality that include the outer rational world as well as the less understood inner world within the psyche of each individual.” (Pg. 1-2)
He recounts, “Let us begin with our story of Amor and Psyche. It seems that there was a kingdom… [with] a king and a queen, and they have three daughters. The two eldest daughters … are not very remarkable. The third daughter, who is named Psyche, is an extraordinary person… People have begun to say, ‘Here is the new Aphrodite. Here is a new goddess.’ Now Aphrodite was an age-old goddess of femininity… But people began saying that Psyche was taking her place… On the other hand, it was rumored that Psyche was born when a dewdrop fell from the sky upon the land… The difference between these two births … reveals the different natures of these two goddesses. Aphrodite is a goddess born out of the sea; she is a primeval, oceanic femininity… One can admire or worship… or one can go Psyche’s way of evolving to a new level of femininity. Those are the choices. Every women has an Aphrodite in her... her chief characteristics being vanity, conniving lust, fertility, and tyranny when she is crossed.” (Pg. 5-6)
He suggests, “Much of the turmoil for a modern woman is the collision between her Aphrodite nature and her Psyche nature. It may help her to have a framework for understanding the process because, if she can see what is happening, she is already well on her way to a new consciousness. Recognizing Aphrodite can be of great value to her. When a man can recognize Aphrodite in a woman and know what to do and what not to do, he is better off as well.” (Pg. 8)
He elaborates, “there is a Psyche in every woman, and it is intensely lonely… When a woman finds herself lonely and not understood, when she finds that people are good to her but stay just a little distance away, she has found the Psyche nature in her own person.” (Pg. 9)
He states, “Marriage is a totally different thing to a man than to a woman. The man is adding to his stature; his world is getting stronger and he has come up a peg. He generally does not understand that he is killing the Psyche in his newfound wife and that he has to… [Psyche] has everything one could wish. Her god-husband … extracts from her the promise that she will not inquire into any of his ways… she may live in her paradise, but she must not ask to know him. Nearly every man wants this of his wife… he wants the old patriarchal marriage, where the man decides all the important issues, the woman says yes to him and there is no trouble.” (Pg. 16)
He asserts, “Some women do experience love as the devouring dragon… Usually a man doesn’t understand this death-resurrection in a woman as he has no parallel to it in his own life. Marriage is not a sacrificial matter to a man, but that is its chief characteristic for a woman… a woman goes through a bewildering series of relationships with her husband. He is the god of love, and he is death at the top of the mountain.” (Pg. 21-22)
He notes, “A man depends largely on the woman for the light in the family, as he is often not very good at finding meaning for himself. Life is often dry and barren for him unless someone bestows meaning on life for him. With a few words a woman can give meaning to a whole day’s struggle, and a man will be very grateful.” (Pg. 26)
He explains, “We must differentiate between ‘loving’ and ‘being in love.’ … Loving another person is seeing that person truly and appreciating him for what he actually is: his ordinariness, his failures, and his magnificence… Loving is… seeing another person for the down-to-earth, practical, immediate experience that another human being is. Loving is not illusory. It is not seeing the other person in a particular role we have designed for him… Being in love is another matter… [It] is an intrusion… of an archetypal, a superpersonal, or a divine world. Suddenly one sees in one’s beloved a god or a goddess… a superpersonal, superconscious realm of being. All this is highly exposive and inflammatory, a divine madness.” (Pg. 30)
He says, “The masculine component in personality, in man and woman, deals primarily with the outer world, while the feminine component deals primarily with the inner world. A fine image of a marriage partnership is one in which the man and woman stand back to back, he is facing the outer world… and she the inner world… Ideally one might imagine the man and woman as two overlapping circles… Gradually, as the woman and the man each develop sufficiently their own capacities to face in both directions, the circles move together and the overlap is deeper.” (Pg. 48)
He suggests, “Modern man needs to give up his godlike assumption of unnatural power over nature and the destiny of the entire world. His Logos has led him into a fixation with power, into an inflated identification with the ram, and he is not an adequate carrier of that force. Just as a person who gets too close to an archetype is obliterated, a person identifying with the ram will also be destroyed.” (Pg. 52)
He observes, “Almost every woman I know has waded right our into the river and has been overwhelmed. Almost every woman I know is too busy. She is into this, studying that, driving in a car pool to this and to that, working hard on some big project, racing around until she is ragged. She needs to be quiet, to appreciate the vastness of life’s responsibilities in a more orderly manner, to do one thing, take one crystal goblet, at a time, concentrate on it, and do it well. Then she may move on to other things.” (Pg. 59)
He concludes, “I think possible the crowning achievement of femininity is to be able to bring joy, ecstasy, pleasure into life. A man values a woman so highly because she has just this capacity or power. Man cannot find this ecstasy alone without the aid of the feminine element, so they find it either in an outer woman or in their own inner woman. Joy is a gift from the heart of woman. It is a woman’s supreme privilege and development to be a bringer of joy…” (Pg. 70)
This book will probably mostly appeal to those attracted to Jungian psychology.
Displaying 1 of 1 review