ABSTRACT
All schools of psychodynamics have concerned themselves with the male-female dichotomy. Individual psychological mechanisms, emotions, and feelings lie in wait, as it were, in the unconscious mind and are mobilized by the events of history. Socioeconomic conditions, psychological configurations, and thought form a syndrome in which every factor is both cause and effect of every other one. The patriarchal principle was the basis of the Western family and Western society, until recently characterized by the social, economic, and ideological superiority of males. Industrial man was deprived of many traditional social ties and human bonds which were in conflict with the newly emerging socioeconomic system. Thus, the actual socioeconomic conditions find their reflections in thought through the intermediary of psychological mechanisms and archetypes. The identification of physiological drives with the female and of intellectual activity with the male is part of the primordial heritage of mankind and is frequently found in symbolic language.
