Schwartz, S. E. (2009). Puella’s shadow. International Journal of Jungian Studies, 1(2), 111–122. doi:10.1080/19409050903109306
In analysis a Puella woman noted she needed a ‘how to be a person manual’ and even though she appeared to function, felt empty within. [...] Living like a blueprint for a woman’s fantasy based on male models, she does not know what it is to be a woman.
[...] There is a wedge between a loving and reparative self and a hating and persecutory self. She is arrested in her capacity to love and true sharing is foreign. A non-nourishing self-absorption arises as a defense against intimacy, be it self to self or self to others. This leaves her unable to satisfy the unconscious losses that elude and contribute to her feeling unlovable. She experiences shame, smallness, vulnerability and fear. All these reactions are registered ‘as if’ she is an observer. The tragedy of being emotionally removed works against her and may be so subtle that the distressing ramifications are underestimated, mostly by herself.
Without an accurate inner mirror, she assesses herself as either inferior or superior, an object fashioned for the adoration of others, her inside and outside worlds disparate and unrelated. Without a proper feminine vessel she can generate nothing, nourish nothing and bring nothing to birth (Hillman, 1989).
[...] Time seems an unreality, a limit she cannot abide. She acts like she has all the time in the world, deluding herself that life is endless, making the present non-existent with an unending supply of corners to turn, at some future date. Although she is wearing the guise of a spontaneous and free nature, true spontaneity can hardly occur if there are no unplanned minutes or rest, and a dread of limitations. When the goal is perfection there is no process, no movement from here to there (Hillman, 1989).
She is lost in despair, unable to mourn early losses in love, and cannot discover herself. Putting up a fancy facade both protects externally and does damage internally. A sense of not being present promotes the continual search for the ideal rather than the real. The fear of disintegration or annihilation by the unconscious can be overwhelming and in the face of this the ego reverts to primitive defenses. Rather, the ego must learn to move closer to the self to bring a feeling of reality and provide a basis for personal existence (Samuels, 1985). But this is not easy for Puella, who identifies as a girl, not a woman. There is fundamental displacement, a lack of rootedness and no way to shore up the fragile sense of identity. Even if she appears to live on the edge, radical and seemingly outside societal norms, she tends psychologically to check back more than move forward. The tradition of feminine passivity leaves many Puella women dependent, immature and unconscious, not knowing what they want or do not want and not fully expressing themselves.
[...] Because Puella feels undeserving of love, which can be painful, she avoids the possibility of that pain (von Franz, 2000). This avoidance results in a lack of engagement, depersonalization and an inability to inhabit the present. She feigns confidence and composure that might come across as exhibitionistic and grandiose, self-centered, even mean-spirited, narrowly ambitious and envious. This facade exudes a crystalline or brittle quality, an aura of aloofness and a stiff veneer deflecting a lack of capacity for intimacy and reciprocity in relationships. Parental complexes overwhelm Puella, a terrified girl fenced off from others.
[...] The Puella woman learns to be aware of her background, her looks and the externals in life, and to refuse the shadow parts. Therefore, she has difficulty accessing either aggression or desire -- two components necessary for self-knowledge, use of talents and the development of intimacy. The shadow exerts itself in the Puella woman who looks the part and functions well according to others, but she feels nothing is meaningful and without meaning her life experiences are nothing (von Franz, 2000). She sidesteps the dark aspects of the self, which are threatening to her fragile sense of identity (Schwartz-Salant, 1982). Instead, a dark shadow envelops her creativity and expressiveness is compromised.
