Inner and Outer Space: Reflections on Womanhood

If F's would gain the determination to represent as imageproviders & law-givers what they have always stood for privately in evolution & in history (realism of householding, responsibility of upbringing, resourcefulness in peacekeeping, & devotion to healing), they might well be mobilized to add an ethically restraining power to pol. But even where equality is closer to realization it has not led to equivalence, & equal rights have by no means secured equal representation in the sense that the deepest concerns of F's find expression in their public influence or their actual role in the game of power. Aspects of the psychoanalytic psychol of F's are discussed. In a play-construction study of adolescents in Calif the investigator determined that the F's emphasized inner space & the M's outer space. The M & F spaces were dominated, respectively, by height & downfall & by strong motion & its channelization or arrest; & by static interiors which were open or simply enclosed & peaceful or intruded upon. It is suggested that these spatial phenomena express 2 principles of arranging space which correspond to the M & F principles in body construction which are relevant throughout life to the elaboration of sex roles in cultural space-times. However, only a total configurational approach - somatic, historical & individual - can help reveal the diff's of functioning & experiencing in context rather than in isolated comparison. E. Weiman.