CHAPTER 6

Emotion,
Thought,
and Gender
Gisela Labouvie-Vief
Department of Psychology
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan

I. I N T R O D U C T I O N

Many theories of t h o u g h t and its d e v e l o p m e n t are based on a polarity

of modes of functioning (e.g., Bruner, 1986; Epstein, 1990; Labouvie-Vief,
1994). O n e m o d e is associated with rational thought, conscious decision
making, and the ability to think in terms of decontextualized principles.
The o t h e r m o d e appears m o r e inherently tied to holistic and contex-
tualized principles, and often links thinking to the e m o t i o n s and to basic
organismic schemata t h r o u g h the use of m e t a p h o r , image, and o t h e r figu-
rative symbols, and t h r o u g h narrative and psychological rather than sci-
entific constructions of reality. This differentiation of t h o u g h t into two
modes also has provided a m o d e l within which to represent m o r e and
less m a t u r e ways of thinking: traditionally, m a t u r e t h o u g h t has been de-
scribed as the ascent of the f o r m e r m o d e over the latter.
However, in contrast to this hierarchical view, many recent views
suggest that figurative and narrative forms of t h o u g h t (and e m o t i o n a l
schemata on which they are based) themselves are i m p o r t a n t modes of
thinking that continue to interact with and e n r i c h d e v e l o p m e n t through-
out the course of life (for review, see Labouvie-Vief, 1994). These forms of

Handbook of Emotion, Adult Development, and Aging 101

Copyright 9 1996 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
102 Gisela Labouvie-Vief

thinking give direction to patterns of development by relating them to

core emotion-relevant experiences, such as those relating to birth, death,
sexuality, love, and generational succession. They provide a basis of rich
concrete texture and emotional associations, forming a medium through
which abstractions are removed from the realm of the impersonal and
g r o u n d e d and r e n d e r e d personally meaningful through rich networks
of self-relevant associations. Thus, many recent theories have begun to
examine how more rational and more figurative forms are integrated,
and what are the conditions u n d e r which they become fragmented or
dissociated.
In this chapter, I discuss this linkage to two modes of thinking from the
perspective of gender. One particularly important dimension of the differ-
entiation of modes of thought is that it is based upon an elaborate imagery
and narrative structure of gendered personifications (e.g., Labouvie-Vief,
1994; Lloyd, 1984; Neumann, 1973; Schott, 1988). Thus the rational mode
is often associated with the masculine, the emotive with the feminine.
This pervasive imagery has influenced the ability of men and women to
emotionally integrate into their self a sense of self as thinker and effective
agent in the world, as opposed to a sense of self as passive recipient of
others' agency. Thus, the area of thought and gender becomes a particu-
larly rich domain within which to discuss the linkages of more rational
and conscious and more emotive and intuitive forms of knowing.

II. E M O T I O N S A N D T H O U G H T

The emancipation of the emotions from a somewhat devalued posi-

tion has begun to sweep psychology and other disciplines. That movement
was united by a wide-ranging critique of the cognitivism and objectivism
prevalent in the past grand theories of behavior, foremost the psychoan-
alytic movement launched by Freud and the cognitive-developmentalism
fathered by Piaget. These theories provided a standard of adult think-
ing that was based on classical models of reason with their emphasis on
conscious-rational processes of integration. Instead of the prevalent cog-
nitivism inherent in these theories, what began to emerge is a view of adult
thought in which rationality is but one c o m p o n e n t that must be integrated
into a broader self structure, which itself is characterized by multiplicity,
contextual (cultural, historical, and interpersonal) situatedness, and the
primacy of biological-emotional forms of regulation (see e.g., Commons,
Richards, & Armon, 1984; Fischer, Shaver, & Carnochan, 1990; Gilligan,
1982; Labouvie-Vief, 1994). This gradual reevaluation and reconstruction
CHAPTER 6 Emotion, Thought, and Gender 103

of a traditional model of maturity has made the study of emotions and its
linkages with cognition a mainstream endeavor.
While Freud and Piaget in some sense continued i m p o r t a n t assump-
tions of rationalism, in a n o t h e r sense they also began significant breaks
with rationalist theories (see Labouvie-Vief, 1994). Thus Freud argued
that all of h u m a n behavior, including advanced forms of rationality, ulti-
mately are to be placed in the context of important emotional systems. For
Freud (e.g., Freud, 1911/1957), t h o u g h t no longer was defined by rea-
son alone, but rather was based on the tension and balance between two
modes of being and of defining reality. One is primary process, an organic
m o d e in which an inner world of desires and wishes prevails. The other
is secondary process, a conceptual m o d e no longer directed by the inner
reality of wish fulfillment and fantasy. Rather, this m o d e strives to find
out what is objectively true, what holds in the outer world.
Piaget's theory, too, began with a dialectic of two modes of thinking.
On the one hand, there were figurative forms of thinking that were tied
to the inner (physiological, emotional, experiential) states of the organ-
ism; on the other, there were operative forms, governed by abstractive
reflection and the ability to dissociate form from content. Paradoxically,
however, neither theorist carried that notion of a dialectic of two forms
of thinking to its logical conclusion. Freud's theory, for example, is less
aimed at a h a r m o n i o u s balance between inner and outer reality, but more
at a fairly complete victory of the secondary process over the primary
process principle. Indeed, the former is called reality principle, whereas the
latter is termed pleasure principle. Thus, Freud defines education "as an in-
citement to the conquest of the pleasure principle, and to its replacement
by the reality-principle" (Freud, 1911/1957, pp. 4 3 - 4 4 ) . Similarly, the
ideal of the adapted individual is the scientist who "comes nearest to this
conquest" (Freud, 1911/1957, p. 43). The result of this differential valu-
ation of the two basic modes of thinking was a view of maturity as the tri-
u m p h of ego control over biology and instincts. In a similar fashion, for
Piaget (e.g., 1955) development became equated with the ascent of op-
erative t h o u g h t over figurative forms.
Many recent writings on the interface between reason and e m o t i o n
instead reflect the view that emotions themselves may constitute an im-
portant and irreducible form of processing (e.g., Labouvie-Vief, Hakim-
Larson, DeVoe, & Schoeberlein, 1989; Lazarus, 1991). That view was, in
fact, anticipated b y J u n g (see Whitmont, 1969).Jung's famous break from
Freud was motivated out of his belief that Freud, t h o u g h in one sense lib-
erating primary process from taboo, in a n o t h e r sense had continued to
imprison it in a rationalist perspective. For Jung, the b r o a d organismic
104 Gisela Labouvie-Vief

heritage expressed in story, myth, and visual symbol was not merely a
primitive mode of processing displaced by the ascent of reason, but po-
tentially was a rich and highly advanced mode of processing and thinking
in its own right. Beyond the capacities of reason, it revealed a larger con-
text that constrains reason, a context of universal biological heritage con-
sisting of the enduring emotional patterns relating to birth, death, sexu-
ality and love, and generational succession.
Jung's work anticipated the recent (see Brunet, 1986; Epstein, 1990;
Labouvie-Vief, 1994) tendency to think of the mind in terms of two modes
of thought. As was true of Freud, he assumed that these two modes always
were interlinked, limiting and constraining each other. However, unlike
Freud, Jung suggested that this interlinkage changed in important ways
during the process of development. Early, in the process of forming a
primary adaptation based on conscious ego control, the individual dis-
owns many emotional experiences that are not congruent with the ideals
of culture. Nevertheless, these aspects of the rejected self strive for ex-
pression in distorted ways, as in processes of dissociation and splitting.
Jung believed that the unique potential of mature development consisted
of working on overcoming these splits and forming a more integrated
structure. In that process, there is also a reevaluation of the role of ratio-
nal processes, with the realization that they are u n d e r g i r d e d by these
powerful emotional p r o t o t y p e s ~ t h e archetypes.
However, when emotions entered the study of thinking, they did
so through the vehicle of a prevalent cognitivism (also fostered by the
Schachter and Singer position that it was cognitive classification that gave
emotions their specific quality). For example, following Piaget (1981),
many studies examined how cognition and its development restructures
the emotional and self systems across the life span. This research, rep-
resented by such authors as Damon and Hart (1988), Kegan (1982),
Labouvie-Vief (1994), Noam (1988), and Selman (1980), has taken its im-
petus from Kohlberg (e.g., 1984) and Loevinger (1993) and suggests that
changes in cognitive complexity across the life span also have a bearing on
how individuals regulate their emotions. For example, our own research
(e.g., Labouvie-Vief et al., 1989; Labouvie-Vief, Chiodo, Goguen, & Or-
woll, 1995) has demonstrated that younger individuals described emo-
tions in terms of outer appearance, conventional standards, relatively sta-
tic impulse monitoring, and an emphasis on control and the ideal. In
contrast, those older or of higher ego level conveyed a more vivid sense
of differentiation of self from norms, of an individuality that is distinct,
historically formed, and subject to change and transformation, and of
complex psychological transactions both within the self and between self
and others.
CHAPTER 6 Emotion, Thought, and Gender 105

However, more recent positions have pointed out that such cogni-
tively based views of emotions and their development do not go far
e n o u g h in accounting for the basic nature of the emotions as core orga-
nizing systems in development (e.g., Fischer et al., 1990). There is in-
creasing recognition that thinking must be placed, first and foremost,
within the context of h u m a n selves who are e m b o d i e d and subject to
powerful organismic systems providing constraints on so-called objective
forms of thinking. Thus, m u c h recent attention has focused on the ways
in which the self is constructed not only t h r o u g h means that are primar-
ily rational, but rather that have to do with narration and imagination
(Bruner, 1986; Gergen, 1994; H e r m a n s & Kempen, 1993), and that reflect
the operation of powerful emotional schemata related to the vicissitudes
of h u m a n relationships.
The relationship system whose implications for theories of the mind
has been studied most carefully thus far is the attachment system, espe-
cially as it is mediated t h r o u g h early p a r e n t - c h i l d relationships. Although
more rationally based theories such as Piaget's have examined the devel-
o p m e n t of the ability to represent persons as a simple parallel to the de-
velopment of impersonal concepts, this work (see e.g., Case, 1991; Fischer
et al., 1990; Labouvie-Vief, 1994; Stern, 1985) has suggested that the abil-
ity to develop integrated concepts of self and others depends not just on
the level of conceptual complexity; it also is a function of interpersonal
e m b e d d i n g experiences. D e p e n d i n g whether or not primary others in
development r e s p o n d to the developing self in a c o h e r e n t and support-
ive way or in an i n c o h e r e n t and narcissistic way, individuals will be able to
form representations of self and others that emphasize a sense of continu-
ity and coherence of diverse emotional states, or else may give evidence
of fragmentation of self and other representations.
Such processes of fragmentation are greatly influenced by relatively
pathological variations of the attachment process, such as those f o u n d in
abuse and neglect. However, a certain degree of fragmentation is also
part and parcel of a more normal developmental course. In growing up,
the individual needs to learn to define reality in large part by the con-
ventions of culture (as mediated first by direct attachment figures later by
more abstract institutions such as those related to education, work, and
government). In this process the individual remains d e p e n d e n t on oth-
ers for a definition of reality, and as a result he or she may be forced to
sacrifice a sense of organismic selfhood in the interest of survival and
of a c c o m m o d a t i o n to c o m m u n a l settings (see Labouvie-Vief, 1994). The
resulting forms of dissociation can be f o u n d in the case of a n o t h e r im-
portant emotional s y s t e m - - s e x u a l i t y - - w h i c h will be the focus of the re-
m a i n d e r of this chapter.
106 Gisela Labouvie-Vief

III. T H O U G H T AND GENDER

Traditional beliefs in the i n d e p e n d e n c e of reason from e m o t i o n and

other figurative forms are belied by the rich systems of m e t a p h o r s and
images that underlie concepts of mind (e.g., Labouvie-Vief, 1994; Lakoff,
1987; Schott, 1988). W h e n we speak of "being in the dark" or of "seeing
the light," of "giving birth" to an idea, of "defending" an a r g u m e n t or "be-
ing defeated" in one, we translate activities of thinking into an emotional
and interpersonal field and thus give evidence that notions of reason ac-
tually are u n d e r g i r d e d by an elaborate structure of metaphors, images,
and stories. These images and stories speak of the nature of reason in
terms of emotion-salient symbols: height versus depth, rise versus fall, vic-
tory versus defeat, light versus dark, birth versus death, activity versus pas-
sivity all are images that evoke powerful emotional associations. All of
those associations indicate our tendency to think of the mind in terms of
two layers of rather different value.
Such a hierarchical view was first articulated by Plato (see Labouvie-
Vief, 1994; Simon, 1978), who evolved a two-layered conception of the in-
dividual. A layer of mind, abstract thought, soul, spirit, or ideals was op-
posed to a layer of body, matter, and enslavement to concrete sensory and
organismic happenings. These layers were arranged hierarchically, with
mind-spirit forming the superior pole, and body and senses forming the
inferior one. Gaining maturity was represented as a heroic j o u r n e y from
the lower, darker, passive layer to the higher, lighter, active one.
That hierarchical worldview also became associated with gender.
Thus in the Symposium Plato argued that the spiritual love between m e n
who create ideas is more valuable than the physical and material love with
w o m e n - - l o v e that results in bodily procreation rather than the creation
of universal ideas (Labouvie-Vief, 1994). This association of masculinity
and femininity with different forms of creating was relatively implicit in
Plato's work, but became m u c h more explicit in that of his student Aris-
totle (see Lerner, 1986). For example, Aristotle (De Generatione Anima-
lium) argued that different forms of creativity were evident in processes of
sexual reproduction. He theorized that the woman contributed the more
primitive material principle to the embryo, but denied that the man's
contribution also was of a material sort. Instead, he held that the mascu-
line contribution was more spiritual and divine. This superiority of the
masculine principle was derived from the belief that the male principle is
active, the female principle passive.
A similar association between qualities of the mind and g e n d e r has
persisted, with some variations, t h r o u g h o u t the ages, and is still evident in
CHAPTER 6 Emotion, Thought, and Gender 107

c o n t e m p o r a r y theoretical discourse. Thus, the tendency to frame models

of the m i n d as a single pole of which the second pole is merely a degra-
dation ultimately is built u p o n an imagery of forms of sexual relations.
As L a c q u e u r (1990) has argued, correlated with such models is a one-sex
view of gender, which pervades the conceptualization of desire right
down to notions of sexual anatomy. Thus, female anatomy is conceived as
a hollow, negative space, characterized by passivity, and simply receiving
(male) life force. In contrast, male anatomy is viewed as positive, active,
creative, and truly generative. More generally, these m e t a p h o r s have
been a d o p t e d directly or indirectly by many psychological theorists who
have used them to describe g e n d e r as a psychological construct. Thus
masculinity is seen as active and intrusive, but femininity as passive and
receptive (e.g., Erikson, 1951; Freud, 1925/1963).
Significantly, this dualism is e x t e n d e d to notions of m i n d and self, as
well. Thus the male is viewed as the desiring subject, the r e p r e s e n t o r who
represents the woman as an object of his desire. Femaleness, in turn, is
constituted out of its being the object to masculine desire: the woman is
the one gazed u p o n and acted upon, the one represented, the other to
the desiring and willful self (Benjamin, 1988; deBeauvior, 1952; Lloyd,
1984). Thus Freud p r o p o s e d that women's lack of phallic sexuality made
their sexual and psychological orientations more passive and masochistic
(Freud, 1925/1963); others taught that the anatomy of women's brains
made t h e m less capable of conscious, rational t h o u g h t and of extraordi-
nary creativity or achievement (Bem, 1993; Labouvie-Vief, 1994). Even
in this century, the notion became popularized by Simone deBeauvior
(1952), who argued that woman is closer to nature because physiology
makes her so. H e r m o d e of creating is by submitting to a natural bodily
function, by remaining enslaved to her biological fate, whereas the man
creates by "acts that transcend his animal nature" (p. 71). By creating cul-
ture, the m a n is t h o u g h t to be involved with a new, freer form of creation,
one that transcends what is organismically given and shapes the future.
The notion of the masculine as identified with mind, spirit, and tran-
scendence is even more pervasive in mythology and religion, literature
and artmdisciplines that were friendly to the emotion-relevant imagery
that underlies our notion of the nature of the mind. In all of those, one
polarity of h u m a n functioning tends to be idealized and even inflated as
'masculine': it is based on an imagery of rise, light, and sun, and it sym-
bolizes such psychological qualities as leadership, rational self-control,
self-assertiveness, and individuality and willfulness. The other polarity, in
turn, is d e g r a d e d and devalued: its imagery is based on falling, being con-
q u e r e d and surrendering, and of engulfment in dark spaces, and it sym-
108 Gisela Labouvie-Vief

bolizes suffering, powerlessness, and entrapment in unconscious pro-

cesses. In mythology and religion, such imagery often occurs as the theme
of the overthrow of original female divine figures by the male godheads or
heros who came to be the original creators, creating the world not organi-
cally, but conceptually, by pronouncing a word (Lerner, 1986). Another
example of this process of the replacement of the feminine principle is
offered by the great Greek tragedies by Aeschylus and Euripides, center-
ing a r o u n d the myths of A g a m e m n o n and Orestes, in which fatherhood
is said to have replaced m o t h e r h o o d as a principle of creation (Labouvie-
Vief, 1994).
How universal is this equation? Much recent writing has suggested
that such patriarchal ideologies in actuality came to replace more women-
focused ones of previous times. Originally proposed by Bachofen in 1861
(Duby & Perrot, 1992/93), this "matriarchy" thesis holds that there must
have been, in prehistoric times and before the rise of the major patriar-
chal societies, the reign of a maternal principle. One hypothesis holds
that the patriarchal principle came into ascendancy with the rise of com-
plex social structures that also brought abstract systems of thought and
writing. However, the historical accuracy of this thesis has recently been
questioned. True, there may have been some early societies in which gen-
der was less polarized than it came to be, quite universally, with the rise
of major patriarchies. Still, most historical and anthropological evidence
(Duby & Perrot, 1992/93; O r t n e r & Whitehead, 1981; Rosaldo & Lam-
phere, 1974) does not support the view that earlier a n d / o r less civilized
societies granted women more power universally.
Moreover, strong patriarchal systems in which women are devalued
along a n a t u r e - c u l t u r e dimension exist world-wide in preliterate soci-
eties. Often such societies also have myths of early matriarchies that even-
tually were superseded by the rule of man. However, such matriarchy
myths can be part of an ideology that devalues women (Rosaldo & Lam-
phere, 1974). Around the world, such myths often tell of the past bad be-
havior and evil of women that eventually was ended when men overturned
the power of women and took control. In this way, matriarchy myths can
be used to justify the masculine order. They form part of a cultural code
distinguishing men from women in terms of morality and authority; they
incorporate the values that grant men more power in social life. Thus
even though they talk about a time before the current social order, they
fix that order as legitimate and invariant. The myths constantly reiterate
that women are not capable of handling power, that they represent the
rule of chaos and trickery.
Such claims as to the capacities and characteristics of women mirror,
of course, those of more m o d e r n writers, among them Freud, who have
CHAPTER 6 Emotion, Thought, and Gender 109

held that w o m e n by nature are m a d e to be intellectually inferior to men.

However, several m o r e recent writers have suggested that the very vehe-
m e n c e with which women's abilities are denigrated points to powerful
systems of defense against the power of w o m e n m d e f e n s e s that lead to
the wide-spread normalization of female inferiority.
Bettelheim (1962) pointed to these defenses when suggesting that
the distortion of female c o m p e t e n c i e s is the result of male envy of those
competencies. Unlike Freud, who had assumed that g e n d e r envy was a
feminine problem, Bettelheim suggests that male envy of the attributes
of w o m e n is, in fact, an extremely pervasive p h e n o m e n o n . He notes that
"men stand in awe of the procreative power of women, that they wish to
participate in it" (p. 10), and he goes on to suggest that evidence of such
envy of female procreative powers can be found widely in many societies,
a l t h o u g h on the whole, it may be severely repressed. In less highly civi-
lized cultures, these attitudes are freely expressed, t h o u g h in highly sym-
bolic form. This is evident worldwide in male initiation rites; such rites
typically involve some symbolic w o u n d i n g in which the initiate is m a d e to
bleed in imitation of female menstruation, or even has part of his geni-
talia altered to mimic female anatomy. Often, these aspects of bodily mu-
tiliations are followed by systematic instruction in sacred and secret
teachings, in which the male initiate is instructed into the realm of spirit
and mind, a realm considered as differentiated from female, material
ways of being. Such practices a p p e a r to be aimed at defining the u n i q u e
nature of the "masculine" as a way of creation u n i q u e to m e n and "bet-
ter" than the "feminine." Yet in this a t t e m p t there is usually a defensive
inversion in which the feminine is considered a lesser version of the mas-
culine. Such a process of inversion appears to be basic to how g e n d e r is
constructed in many cultures.
In a related fashion, C h o d o r o w (1978) has suggested that masculine
d e v e l o p m e n t requires that the boy push away from the m o t h e r , defining
his identity in opposition to the feminine. Adopting a similar argument,
Stoller (1985) also maintains that, contrary to the classical assumption of
the primacy of the "masculine" realm, femininity in actuality constitutes a
p r i m a r y state in h u m a n development. This state of "protofemininity" re-
sults from the m o t h e r ' s pervasive role in early development, because it is
the m o t h e r who defines an early core of identity. Says Stoller,
I suspect that the problem boys have with creating their masculinity from the
protofemininity leaves behind a "structure, " a vigilance, a fear of the pull of the
symbiosis--that is, a conflict between the urge to return to the peace of the sym-
biosis and the opposing urge to separate out as an individual, as a male, as mas-
culine. Much of what we see as masculinity is, I think, the effect of that struggle.
For much of masculinity, as is well known, consists of struggling not to be seen by
110 Gisela Labouvie-Vief

oneself or others as having feminine attributes, physical or psychologic. One must

maintain one's distance from women or be irreparably infected with femininity.
(Stoller, 1985, p. 18)

C o m p l e m e n t a r y to the definition of m a n h o o d , w o m a n h o o d in m a n y
cultures is defined by practices by which w o m e n are m a d e into sexual and
psychological objects to the action of men. Such practices can range from
direct genital mutilation as a way of subordinating female desire (and ulti-
mately, female fertility) to that of men, to isolating her from participation
in public life t h r o u g h exclusion from education and high status work
(deBeauvoir, 1952; Labouvie-Vief, 1994; O r t n e r & Whitehead, 1981).

IV. T H O U G H T A N D G E N D E R IN D E V E L O P M E N T

Cultural definitions of masculine and feminine aspects of the m i n d

have deeply influenced men's and women's identification with aspects of
the mind. Whereas masculinity has been associated with increases in ab-
stract t h o u g h t and rational decision making, femininity has b e e n tied to
context sensitivity and field d e p e n d e n c e . At the same time, the cultural
idealization of rational domains of mind, with their associated symbols of
heavenly heights and golden light, and their equation with masculinity
has allowed m e n to claim so-called masculine attributes with a sense of
pride and self-confidence. However, these domains were not so valued in
w o m e n m a s Kant had it, w o m e n who know Greek or mathematics "might
as well even have a beard" (Kant, q u o t e d in Battersby, 1989, p. 77): Knowl-
edge makes t h e m grotesque, freakish, even "loathsome." At the same
time, so-called feminine domains of t h o u g h t were devalued and did not
provide an i m p o r t a n t alternative source of self-worth. As a result, mascu-
line d e v e l o p m e n t often has been associated with increases in individual-
ity, agency, and i n d e p e n d e n c e , whereas w o m e n often have e x p e r i e n c e d
their d e v e l o p m e n t as renunciation, surrender, and v i c t i m i z a t i o n m a loss
of voice, a process of silencing (Bem, 1993; Brown & Gilligan, 1992;
Labouvie-Vief, 1994).
The silencing of w o m e n is a historical reality, because w o m e n have
left few direct records of their experience (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Duby
& Perrot, 1992/93). This silence of w o m e n has often been taken as evi-
dence of their biological limits (see Gould, 1981), but with the rise of fem-
inism in this century we have come to u n d e r s t a n d the social and cultural
practices that create such silence. As w o m e n have b e g u n to gain greater
access to educational and economic resources, however, their silence has
b e c o m e i n t e r r u p t e d with attempts to speak their own experience; and as
CHAPTER 6 Emotion, Thought, and Gender 111

they have participated in speaking about their own minds, the so-called
intellectual inferiority gradually e m e r g e d to be related to systematic so-
cial practices, misinterpretations of available data, and other vicissitudes
of gender-related emotions.
Until early this century, philosophers and psychologists believed that
women were biologically u n e q u i p p e d for superior intelligence, creativity,
or moral j u d g m e n t (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Labouvie-Vief, 1994). How-
ever, the experiences of women often have belied these stereotypes, and
t h r o u g h o u t the ages women have told of learning to suppress their
strong creative urges and their strivings for self-expression, which came
to be perceived as a source of disapproval and danger. As Gerda Lerner
(1993) notes, historically, claiming the authority to write, and particularly
to write about the self, did not fit the cultural mold. A woman asserting
authority was a freak and had to deal with that fact in her writing. In
medieval women's writings, women often claimed validation by appeal-
ing to God as a source of assuming the a u t h o r i t y ~ c l e a r l y perceived as
d e v i a n t ~ t o write. For example, the abbess Hildegard of Bingen (Fox,
1985) claimed that she had received divine inspiration t h r o u g h a series of
visions, and only after a long struggle for self-authorization d e t e r m i n e d
to follow her visions. If a woman claimed more h u m a n authorization, she
had to spend considerable time defending her place and her voice, in-
cluding (a) asserting she actually was the author of her own work, and
(b) that she had a right to her own thought. Often, she dealt with this
p r o b l e m by finding a male sponsor to write a preface to her writing.
Such struggles of women with their own sense of creativity is ex-
pressed very poignantly in the lives of many writers of this century, such
as Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. Echoing Virginia Wolff's earlier study
A Room of One's Own, Heilbrun (1988) recently has argued that highly cre-
ative women learn to experience their powers as dangerous and as out-
side the self. Because cultural attitudes belittle and ridicule the striving for
power and creative expression in women, they are fearful of having ap-
plied to them such labels as "shrill," "angry," and "egotistical." Ashamed
of the creative strivings that lead to such labeling, extraordinary women
are engaged in a constant struggle to hide the clarity of their minds and
the urgency of their creative strivings. Indeed, Heilbrun argues that well
into this century, it r e m a i n e d impossible for women to admit in their
own autobiographical narratives their claims of achievement, admissions
of ambition, or the realization that their own accomplishments may be
more than mere luck or the result of others' generosity. She notes that
many autobiographies of women of the past indicate that accomplished
women tend to describe their exciting lives in a flat and unexciting way,
112 Gisela Labouvie-Vief

even though there is ample evidence--as can be gleaned, for example,

from published c o r r e s p o n d e n c e m t h a t this is a one-sided narrative:

Their letters and diaries are usually different, reflecting ambitions and struggles
in the public sphere; in their published autobiographies, however, they portray
themselves as intuitive, nurturing, passive, but never--in spite of the contrary
evidence of their accomplishments--managerial. (Heilbrun, 1988, p. 24)

In her book Silences, Olsen (1978) also addresses this conflict. Women,
argues Olsen, live u n d e r the agony that creation and femininity are in-
compatible. As an example, Olsen quotes from Anais Nin's diaries:

The aggressive act of creation; the guilt for creating. I did not want to rival man;
to steal man's creation, his thunder. I must protect them, not outshine them.
(in Olsen, 1978, p. 49)

As attention has been drawn to these achievement conflicts in women,

research has upheld few objective differences in intellectual status be-
tween men and women (see Labouvie-Viefet al., 1995; Maccoby &Jacklin,
1974). Following Leta Hollingsworth's (1926) pioneering early research,
what differences do exist often could be explained in terms of differences
in educational opportunities and other cultural practices. Yet changes are
a matter of degree, and psychological research continues to demonstrate
that old patterns persist. Despite evidence that female intellectual endow-
ment does not lag behind that of men, women on average continue to lag
in achievement behind men. Moreover, this gender lag increases in the
course of development. Indeed, in early childhood, girls surpass boys on
most measures of school achievement. However, as they grow into ado-
lescence, girls' superiority over boys begins to decline, and they tend to
fall back behind boys.
Girls growing up often begin to downgrade and relinquish ambitious
career goals and come to deny that they are gifted or special; instead of
p r o u d displays of self-exhibition one finds an insistence on normality.
Thus girls who early in adolescence were confident and outspoken, be-
come increasingly confused and silent about what they know. Thus as they
grow older, girls often are found to retreat from achievement-related chal-
lenges; standing out for women becomes a source of conflict and shame,
and they attempt to hide their excellence (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Kerr,
1987).
As girls relinquish a proud sense of self-confidence they also become
susceptible to experiences of shame, depression, and powerlessness that
are not equally prevalent among boys. As they grow older, boys and girls
begin to diverge in their patterns of emotional expression and coping:
males increasingly externalize or act out conflict, whereas females in-
CHAPTER 6 Emotion, Thought, and Gender 113

creasingly use defenses that internalize conflict, turning aggression and

assertiveness inward. As a result, different patterns of vulnerability to dis-
orders of self emerge for men and women. Boys and young m e n experi-
ence more behavioral and acting out disorders, whereas girls and women
experience more emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression
(Labouvie-Vief et al., 1995).
Of course, insight into the cultural processes that shape different
gender-relevant emotional schemata itself is a result of p r o f o u n d cultural
changes by which the mind is being de-gendered (see Bem, 1993; Labouvie-
Vief, 1994). As c o n t e m p o r a r y theories are reevaluating old dualisms
of abstract-concrete, m i n d - b o d y , t r a n s c e n d e n t - i m m a n e n t , objective-
subjective, and r e a s o n - e m o t i o n , so are they transforming traditional du-
alisms relating to gender. However, such transformation is far from a uni-
form process; it may be associated with more mature, advanced forms of
development, rather than being an automatic result of cultural changes.
Thus, we already n o t e d t h a t J u n g believed that early development fosters
the formation of dualisms, whereas to transcend those dualisms is specific
task of development a r o u n d and after midlife and beyond. In a similar
vein, a n u m b e r of life span researchers have suggested that the ability to
bridge r e a s o n - e m o t i o n dualisms and to u n d e r s t a n d their dialectical re-
lationship emerges only in a d u l t h o o d (see Labouvie-Vief, 1994).
Such movements away from dualistic thinking also appear to charac-
terize thinking about gender. As men and women move into midlife, one
often observes a freeing from the cultural constraints of " m a n h o o d " or
"womanhood." No longer defined as objects to the agency of men, women
often move from a world of confinement to one of daring openness, of a
release from their earlier interiority. Thus from young a d u l t h o o d to mid-
life, women have been f o u n d to become less traditionally "feminine" but
more dominant, i n d e p e n d e n t , objective, and intellectually oriented. In
contrast, m e n are sometimes f o u n d to give up inflated agentic claims. In-
stead, they elaborate those dimensions of self previously projected onto
women as dangerous and uncanny: those related to their intuition and to
nonrational dimensions of life, and more generally, to those aspects of ex-
perience in which we feel ourselves to be moved and receptive rather than
proactive (for review, see Gutmann, 1987; Labouvie-Vief et al., 1995).

V. C O N C L U S I O N S

I began this chapter by talking about the relationship between two

modes of thinking. Most major theories of development in the past pro-
posed a differentiation between a rational and a non-rational m o d e and
114 Gisela Labouvie-Vief

suggested that the latter m o r e strongly reflects the influences of impor-

tant e m o t i o n a l schemata. This m o d e was assumed to be replaced in the
course of d e v e l o p m e n t by m o r e rational forms of thinking. Using the ex-
amples of the d o m a i n of g e n d e r and thought, I suggested that in contrast,
this hierarchical resolution actually reflects a dissociation of rational and
n o n r a t i o n a l forms of thinking. Thus, the latter are not really given up in
development, but rather continue to function in an u n r e g u l a t e d form.
An e m e r g i n g solution to this p r o b l e m is to view the modes not as op-
positional, but rather as interacting with, and mutually informing each
other. Thus as rational structures b e c o m e m o r e powerful, they can em-
brace and contain e m o t i o n s that, at less developed levels, are too dis-
ruptive and disorganizing to be integrated. T h r o u g h this movement,
then, rational structures can inform emotions, r e n d e r i n g t h e m m o r e ob-
jective and c o m p r e h e n s i b l e . In turn, a n o t h e r c o m p l e m e n t a r y m o v e m e n t
enriches rational structures with emotions: as e m o t i o n a l schemata change
d u r i n g development, they also can be an occasion to inform rational struc-
tures, and form an impetus for f u r t h e r development.
However, such a mutually supportive interaction is not by any means
an automatic o u t c o m e of development. The degree to which the two
m o d e s cooperate in a fairly balanced way d e p e n d s on the degree to which
they are integrated in the s u r r o u n d i n g milieu in which individuals de-
velop. This c h a p t e r has suggested that the two systems of t h o u g h t have re-
m a i n e d extremely oppositional at the cultural and collective level. This
dualism, in turn, has t e n d e d to put a limit on individuals' ability to in-
tegrate gender-related e m o t i o n a l experiences and rational views of the
world.
As Bettelheim (1962) argues, strong dualisms may be especially preva-
lent in past societies in which socialization for violence contributed to ex-
t r e m e g e n d e r polarization. In such societies, the capacity to talk a b o u t
and conceptualize the underlying e m o t i o n a l realities of conflict between
the genders remains negligible, and destructive e m o t i o n s are acted out in
the open. However, as world cultures have e x p a n d e d and b e g u n to form
a worldwide community, m o r e reflection on and conceptualization of the
underlying e m o t i o n a l conflict has occurred. As a result, the natural envy
of one g e n d e r for the o t h e r can be rationally acknowledged as a condition
of existence, rather than being acted out in ritual and cultural practice.
Interestingly, such a view continues the p r o g r a m b e g u n by Freud
and Piaget, who p r o p o s e d a dialectic between two systems of thinking,
yet a b a n d o n e d that dialectic by considering one of those systems less ma-
ture. By acknowledging this a b a n d o n e d system as a dimension that has its
own potentials for growth we can continue to complete the kind of proj-
ect b e g u n by these theorists. By embracing the full range of h u m a n emo-
tions rather than bracketing t h e m as "immature," we not only can g r o u n d
CHAPTER 6 Emotion, Thought, and Gender 115

rational structures in i m p o r t a n t o r g a n i s m i c systems, b u t we also can en-

vision new levels of m a t u r i t y in which, ultimately, the split b e t w e e n rea-
son a n d e m o t i o n is t r a n s c e n d e d .

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