◆ SpookStack

r Thus “falling in love” is FiO more than the process of ai. teration: of male vision—through idealization, rtystifico~ infertority. However, the woman knows that this idealization, which she works so hard to Produce, is a lie, and that it is only 2 matter of time before he “sees through her,” Her life is a hell, vacillating between an all-consuming need Persistent feelings of inauthenticity when she doss achieve his love. Thus her whole identity hangs “a the balance of her love life. She is allowed to love s2rselt only if a man finds her worthy of love, But if we could eliminate the Political context of love vetween the sexes, would we not have some depree of idealization remaining in the love process itself? I think sQ. For the process occurs in the same manner whoever the love choice: the lover “opens up” to the other. Be. cause of this fusion of egos, in which each sees and cares =bout the other as a new self, the beauty/character of the beloved, perhaps hidden to outsiders under layers of dsfenses, is revealed. “I wonder what she sees in bim,” then, meezns not only, “She is a fool, blinded with roman- ticism,” but, “Her love has Jent her x-ray vision, Perhaps we are missing something.” (Note that this phrase is most commonly used about women. The equivalent phrase about mer.’s slavery to love is more often some- thing like, “She has him wrapped around her finger,” she has him so “snowed” that he is the Iast one to sce through her.) Increased sensitivity to the real, if hidden, values in the other, however, is not “blindness” or “ideal- “ation” Sut is, in fact, deeper vision. It is only the false ~<alization we have described above that is responsible or the destruction. Thus it is nof the process of love tself that is at fault, but its political, i.e., unequal power renee ster ee, The Case for Feminist Revolution - a3: Context: the who, why, when and. where of it is whe makes it now such a holocaust. 0 But abstractions about love are only one more svar tom of its diseased state. (As one female paticat c: Reik so astutely put it, “Men take love either too seri- ously or not seriously enough.”) Let's look at it more. cos cretely, as we now experience it in its corrupted form. Once again we shall quote from the Reikian Confessir-t9i: For if Reik’s work has any value it is where he night least suspect, i-e., in his trivial feminine urge to “poxs' >.” Here he is, justifying himself (one supposes his Super- ego is troubling him): A has-been like myself must always be somewhere and wo; : ing on something. Why should I not oc...oy myself? with th. smail questions that are not often poset and yet perhans < - be answered? The “petites questions” h..e a legitimate plac: beside the great and fundamental proble:as of psychoanals »‘¢ ft takes moral courage to write about —-rtain things, as fe. example about a game that little girls play in the interv .i. between classes. Js such a there really worthy of a servic « psychoanalyst who has passed his 77th yvar? (Mtalics mice, And he reminds himself: But in psychoanalysis there are no wu: important ther. 21 there are only thoughts that pretend to be unimportane 2. order not to be told. ——: Thus he rationalizes what in fact may be the only vain~ able contribution of his work. Here are his patients of both sexes speaking for themselves about their Jove lives: WOMEN: Later on he called me a sweet girl... I didn't answe-..