Ravaged Bridegroom: Masculinity in Women

Graham Jackson is a Jungian psychoanalyst and an author.

Jungian analyst Marion Woodman’s latest book might be called a New Age
rhapsody on the theme of the wounded inner man. Weaving strands of
fiction, poetry, myth, and dream with her years of clinical experience,
the author explores the guises that the masculine assumes in both the
unconscious dramas and conscious relationships of the modern woman. As
clown, trickster, sorcerer, rebel, cripple, or criminal, he entraps her,
makes her a slave to addictions, takes away her voice, alienates her
from her body, turns her soul into an enemy—something to be plundered
and violated rather than honored as essence. Probing beneath these
guises, Woodman exposes the abusive contributions of mother and father
(collective as well as personal) and the life-destroying ideology of a
decadent patriarchy (under which mother and father are also reeling).
The soul-making redemption that the true bridegroom brings is available
only at the end of a long quest, which Woodman likens throughout to the
Grail Quest, as undertaken by the naive, mother-bound Perceval. This
quest is, of course, the individuation process Jung dedicated his life
to amplifying. What Woodman does for us is to show, in a highly
differentiated manner, how that process reflects and at the same time
rejects specific cultural influences. Her theme is not a new one to her;
she has touched on it enthusiastically and energetically in such earlier
works as Addiction to Perfection and The Pregnant Virgin. Here as before
it is abundantly illustrated with enlivening case material. The Ravaged
Bridegroom, however, creates a somewhat different ambience than do its
predecessors, one that I can only describe as ringing with prophetic
warning and an almost ecstatic call to arms.