The Fear of Women

1968, possibly first edition, from Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
Wolfgang Lederer, M.D.
The Fear of Women
Original and purchase price unknown
Very worn paperback
C

After reading almost 300 pages of increasingly muddled thinking, I got to the opening line of the conclusion:  "We are living in a very enlightened age."  And I laughed out loud, hard.  Lederer goes on to say, "We live by reason-- and therefore we know less about woman than almost any other age."  The "we" is "men," and if they know/knew less about women, perhaps it was because they didn't actually ask what women thought and felt, or looked honestly at what they did, and only projected onto them.  (Reason and enlightment imply observation after all.)  Lederer admits at one point that he's not really concerned with what women are, but rather with what men think they are.  But drawing conclusions from myths and psychotherapy patients gives a distorted view of what men in general think, or have thought.

This book is quoted in a book or two I own on neolithic Goddess religions, because it does have some pagan examples, including some pictures, but it's far from feminist itself.  Not that it's misanthropic per se.  Lederer believes that men and women should be appreciated for what they each contribute, but he doesn't mean as individuals but as how well they live up to masculinity and femininity respectively.  He thinks that men have to learn how to be Men, while women just are, when in fact femininity is just as much learned behavior as masculinity.

I'd give the book a C- since, despite its weaknesses, it is interesting to see how (some) men's fear of women has manifested itself over the centuries.  But I do like the illustrations, including the New Yorker cartoons of society matrons.