Page 165 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 5

A Portrait of a Christian Psychologist: Paul C. Vitz

his energy, strength, and intelligence exclusively Female Empowerment
to his own individual well being. He looks out For women, caught up in a society of exploitive
for his career. He looks out for Number One. men which seems to be the historical rule the
The macho man treats women as sex partners; psychological problem is different.
he understands marriage as something to be
avoided or as a temporary arrangement to be They need to receive more power, encourage-
maintained until something or someone better ment, and autonomy. How is this psychological
comes along. need met by the fatherhood of God, mediated
Many other men, the new wimps, are nice an- through Jesus? It is met very simply by recei-
drogynous creatures who are fun to go shop- ving the power of God through the Holy Spirit.
ping with, but they are also indecisive, unreliab- For example, consider the many female saints
le, and weak. In England I understand this type in the Catholic Church (e.g. Elizabeth of Hun-
is often called the “Teddy bear man”. In short, gary, Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, Catherine of
men are opting for one of two ways of being - Siena, up to Edith Stein and Mother Teresa of
the strong man who leads and exploits or the Calcutta) and the Eastern Orthodox tradition
weak man who is ineffectual but nice. Recently, with their long list of admired Holy Women
it seems as though the latter is the fastest gro- and many holy Protestant women (e.g. Corre
wing category. We all know “the great American ten Boom). Other examples include the early
wimp.” He feels uncomfortable around strongly female martyrs, the many holy women in the
masculine men because they sense that he is New Testament. A woman who has God as her
soft and weak. The wimp needs to be loved at Father, Jesus as her Friend or Spouse, and the
all costs, and the typi¬cal cost of the need to be Holy Spirit as her best friend is pretty much an
loved is the truth. Holding to the truth in the irresistible force. The history of the many great
face of social pressure, in response to political female saints attests both to their womanliness
correctness, often means rejection by friends or and to their extraordinary power. They recogni-
parishioners. The easy way out is to compromi- zed that their power had been lent to them and
se truth for social acceptance. In particular, the was not “theirs,” thus they remained feminine.
truth of manhood embarrasses him, and there- Indeed, there is nothing equivalent to the great
fore he acts as though it does not exist. tradition of female saints in the Christian tradi-
This new type of sensitive American, the wimp, tions. In no other religious or secular tradition
was at first welcomed by many women, but now in the world do we find so many examples of
the complaints have come in loud and clear. women who were both truly holy, truly power-
7
The wimpo, like the macho, fundamentally avo- ful, and truly women—and honored by men for
ids commitment to others. He cannot be coun- being all three.
ted on; often he is still depen¬dent, too much
like a child - a Peter Pan. Hence both the macho Individual Autonomy and Sexual Identity for
and the wimpo avoid true commitment to wo- Both Sexes: The Major Psychological Argu-
men, and of course women know it. The final ment
result is that a good man bec¬omes even harder In a developmental sense, each child, male or
to find. All this only increases the disappoint- female, has two major tasks. Psychologists refer
ment, frustration, and anger of many women, to one of these tasks as “individuation.” This is
which only leads to further criticisms of men the process of separating oneself from others,
and manhood, which further pushes men away. especially from the mother or mother figure.
Talk about a vicious cycle! For a variety of reasons, male children find this
task easier than female children. In part, it is be-
Again, the answer is the strong man who serves, cause both the mother and baby boy recognize
who sacrifices for others. the boy as different, and therefore separation
and autonomy come more easily to the boy. A
contributing factor is that male children are re-
7 See Kiley; many of the complaints, naturally enough, latively less interested in people and in relation-
surfaced in the popular media.

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