You see, I suffered from not only the nice girl, but the good girl syndrome. I finally broke completely, in my late thirties, when I was painfully and simultaneously involved with two men, which drove me and my guilt into a complete nervous breakdown, all the while taking care of kids and being back in college.
My problem was, I had a complex. I had always been good and virtuous, while all around me the men in my life, my husband, my companion after my marriage, did what they wanted, disregarding me, but I always had to be good. The Baba thing did not help, with all the purity around it.
Once, my brother said, "why do you try to be so good? Why are you so afraid?" You see, I was already turning bad in society's standards, because I was torn between two lovers, and not feeling like a fool, but acting like an idiot. I was all over the map, trying to escape abandonment. Looking back, I have a little compassion for myself, because I realize in many ways I was still a girl. I suppose there is something to be said to having children late, since I had my first child pretty young and my second relatively young, twenty-seven, a very average and common age for childbirth, although my own mother having had me, the fourth of four, at thirty-five, told me she was too old by the time I was born, whatever that means. The funny part is my mother's friends are always young enough to be her daughters, and she even tells me sometimes that they are her daughters, so it is kind of ridiculous, one more thing to say, "okay, whatever, about."
Although, Freud is somewhat discredited in saying that it all is caused by the mother, because mental illness such as schizophrenia is caused by an organic brain disease and many theories, even an intrauterine virus may be the cause, and he is quoted as saying, "I do not like these patients," some mental illness such as borderline personality disorder is believed to have to do with a lack of bonding between mother and child, a fear of abandonment, as well as annihilation, causing the individual suffering from this diagnosis to experience rage, risky behavior, frantic efforts to escape real or imagined abandonment, for example partners in love relationships, as well as drama. In this illness, Freud is right.
I still prefer Jung, (and I find him more in line with The New Humanity than Freud, who contributed a lot, such as psychoanalysis), because of his contributions such as the shadow.
The shadow is our dark side, our side that is not perfect, that wants to sneak, like the girl in The Red Shoes, but like in the story, the woman may want to sneak what is really unhealthy, such as excessive drinking, promiscuity, anorexia-nervosa, etc., but if women were given a healthy foundation to begin with through parenting and good guidance as well as a less conforming and forbidding society, then she would be less likely to burst like a damn, when the inevitable shadow must emerge, she might deal with it in healthier ways.
I was once told in counseling, that there were experiments done with babies, where a cloth was put over their face only for a few seconds. Some babies cried, but stopped crying almost immediately, when the cloth was removed, but others kept crying long after the cloth was removed, as though it had really upset them. He said I was the category of babies who kept on crying. I think this is because of what is referred to in Women Who Run With the Wolves as the collapsed mother. Perhaps her own mother was the same, but one way or the other this is who she is. I suppose, in a sense, this is quite Freudian, because some things do stem from one's mother.
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