FEMININITY. THE CURRENT PROBLEM OF WOMEN'S IDENTITY

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

FEMININITY. ACTUAL PROBLEM OF WOMEN'S IDENTITY.

Women with different levels of financial wealth, who are united by common problems, are increasingly seeking psychological help: dissatisfaction in family or sexual life, cannot find a strong worthy man, the inability to build healthy relationships with a partner, infertility or fear of motherhood, self-esteem problems, the need for constant gaining approval and accumulating achievements. A woman can be tormented by a conflict about choosing a family or a career. Or a woman who has devoted most of her life to her children suddenly finds herself in an existential crisis.

In society, it is generally accepted that a woman becomes a Woman if she has lost her virginity, got married or gave birth to a child. However, these changes are external in nature and often do not affect the deep, internal life of a woman.

A woman can go through all the above stages and look well-groomed and attractive, but still not feel like a woman. In the environment of each of us there are probably "eternal girls" - women who can be married and even have children, but at the same time behave like schoolgirls, "eternal daughters" - women who resemble 4-5 year old daughters who are always looking for " your daddy "or" daddy ".

You can often see women who are deeply unsure of themselves, overflowing with rivalry with both men and women, as if doubting their gender roles, dependent on the mother's opinion, allowing her to interfere in her life, choices and family relationships.

At first glance, absolutely successful "iron ladies" seek psychological help - highly educated, socially secured, who have achieved success in their careers or their own business, outwardly quite initiated, but often lonely - whose way of action is far from feminine.

As the famous actress Sharon Stone put it: "We ourselves became the guys whom we wanted to marry in our youth."

Modern society sets before a woman new culturally determined goals and criteria, which she seeks to meet. And it already reflects the conflict - the abundance of trainings on femininity and along with them training programs "how to become a successful woman and reach the top in business."

The traditional natural destiny of a woman as a wife, mother, homemaker has changed as a result of the birth and active propaganda of the feminist movement more than half a century ago. Having achieved its original goals, the feminist movement began to introduce imbalances in society, when it reoriented itself more towards raising the status of women as superior to men.

As for the very concepts of "male" and "female", their conservative stereotype, characteristic of the traditional patriarchal system for centuries, has outlived itself evolutionarily. The boundaries of the sexes are gradually blurring, the male and female roles in society and the family system are already significantly blurred. A new “unisex” identity has been formed, which combines the roles and ideas of both male and female identities. In addition to such concepts as heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality, “asexuals” openly talk about their choice - people with a lack of sexual orientation or one of its variants.

The desire for narcissistic satisfaction is growing - eternal youth, fame, power, wealth, career, the pursuit of super-pleasure, aggressive sexuality, free relationships. The media is shaping the image of modern femininity through the prism of one of the most profitable industries - the beauty industry.

All this excludes the natural destiny of a woman, the emotional and mental sphere and personal experience. This often leads many modern women with a disturbed female identity to internal conflicts.

But the formation of a woman's identity is a complex and lengthy process. Women are not born - they become a woman. And in modern society this is a doubly difficult task.

A girl has to overcome various difficulties at each stage of the formation of a female identity in order to fulfill the main task - to integrate the opposites of male and female in her psyche, to make her choice in favor of accepting female identity as a single one. And keep this preference throughout life.

In my practice, I rely on the analysis of three different experiences related to gender: “gender identity”, “sex-role identity”, “sexual-partner orientation” according to R. Stoller:

• Gender identity includes characteristics that make up a combination of masculine and feminine traits of an individual, due to a variety of biological, psychological, socio-cultural factors.
• Sex-role identity is formed on the basis of nuclear gender identity, but differs from it; it represents gender-based forms of conscious and unconscious interaction with other people.
• Sexual-partner orientation expresses a person's preference to choose objects of love of a certain biological sex, according to A. Green, it is formed separately from other aspects of experiences associated with sex.

Violations of the formation of any of these aspects of development in childhood can lead in adulthood to a violation of female identity or to an unconscious rejection of it, problems in relationships, sexuality, low self-esteem, self-realization, etc.

The formation of a woman's identity begins from the time the fetus develops in the womb. And it continues throughout life. That is why the root of problems and violations of female identity should be sought in the unconscious psyche. And no amount of training, meditation and esoteric practices can help solve them.

To solve a woman's problems in adult life, while conducting psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the client and I have to make a real journey into the past - in early childhood, relationships with parents and between parents, sincerely wish the birth of a girl, relive weaning from the mother's breast, heal childhood traumas, to reconstruct the relationship with the father, who plays a vital role in the formation of the future woman. Gradually reveal female sexuality - after all, the main mystery of femininity lies in it. Work out separation - separation from both parents, as well as conflicts with siblings. Restore integrity and value, find pleasure and feel the dignity of being a woman.

In conclusion, I would like to note that it is important for a modern woman to develop different aspects of her identity - for her, love and family are no less important than professional success. Harmonious development of the personality, the integration of male and female is possible only when a woman is not afraid of the opposite parts of her I, but accepts them entirely and learns to turn them to her own good.

To date, psychoanalytic psychotherapy is one of the most effective methods that allows you to identify the most profound - namely, unconscious causes of the disorder, and to achieve changes at this level, and subsequently in life, the woman's environment. To restore contact with your femininity, to strengthen the female identity, to reveal female sexuality, to integrate the opposite parts of the I, masculine and feminine, shadow aspects of the personality in the woman's psyche. And as a result, establish contact with yourself, your desires, feelings, love yourself and your female body without exhausting diets and plastic surgeries, get rid of painful female fears - fear of aging and loneliness, enjoy motherhood and relationships with a man, gain self-confidence, balance of strength and weakness, courage and vulnerability, control and trust, fully realize oneself both in a career or favorite creative activity, and in a family.