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X Motherhood and Prostitution The main objection to my account so far will be that it cannot be valid for all women. It will be argued that what I have said may apply to some, or even many, but that there are others . . . I did not set out with the intention of dealing with any speci¤c forms of femininity. Women can be classi¤ed according to various points of view, and one must certainly beware of claiming that what is true of an extreme type, which can be proved to exist everywhere but which is frequently almost entirely hidden by the predominance of its precise opposite, is true of the generality of women. Women can be classi¤ed in a number of ways, and there are many different female characters, even though in this context the word “character” must only be used in an empirical sense. All the characteristics of Man have remarkable analogies with those of Woman, which often give rise to amphibolies (an interesting comparison of this kind will be made later in this chapter). However, in addition, Man’s character is always immersed, and ¤rmly anchored, in the sphere of the intelligible, making the confusion between the theory of the soul and characterology, which I censured earlier (p. 73), more understandable. The characterological differences between women are never rooted in the primal soil deeply enough to result in the development of an individuality, and there is perhaps not one single property of Woman that could not be modi¤ed, suppressed, or indeed annihilated in the course of life by the will of Man. I have so far deliberately ignored the question of what further differences there might be between equally male or equally female individuals. Even though the method of explaining psychological differences in accordance with the principle of intermediate sexual forms provided me with only one guide among thousands to this most complex of all areas, I have concentrated on it to the exclusion of others for the simple reason that the introduction of any other principle , the expansion of my linear re®ections into a plane, would have disrupted this ¤rst attempt at a thorough characterological orientation, which was designed to advance beyond the determination of temperaments or types of mentality . The development of a speci¤c characterology of women must be held over for a separate study, but my treatise also takes some account of individual differences between women, and I trust that I have avoided the mistake of making false generalizations and drawn only such conclusions as apply in the same form and in the same degree to all equally feminine women without exception. Up to this point I have been concerned solely with W in general. However, as my arguments will be primarily contradicted with reference to one type of Woman, I must begin by selecting one pair of opposites from the many. All the bad and hateful things that I have said about women will be countered with the notion of Woman as a mother. It is therefore necessary to discuss Woman as a mother, but she cannot be understood without consideration being given at the same time to her antipole, which shows the realization of the other, diametrically opposed, potential within Woman. It is only in this way that the type of the mother can be clearly de¤ned and the properties of the mother made to stand out sharply against everything alien to them. The polar opposite of the type of the mother is the type of the prostitute. The inevitability of this distinction is no more deducible than the fact that Man and Woman are opposites. Just as the latter is only seen, and not proven, the former must also be seen, or an attempt must be made to ¤nd it in reality, in order to ascertain whether the reality readily ¤ts into the pattern. I shall deal with the quali¤cations that must be made in due course. For the time being, let us assume that women always have something of two types in them, sometimes more of one, sometimes more of the other. These types are the mother and the prostitute. This dichotomy would be misunderstood if it were not distinguished from a popular distinction. It is often said that Woman is both mother and lover. I cannot see any point in this distinction. Is the quality of lover meant to denote the stage that must necessarily precede motherhood? If so, it cannot be a...

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