Dragon Mother Quotes

“We see that it is not the alleged profligacy of the male world that necessarily causes immorality and delinquency in boys and girls. Women are not oppressed and morally led astray because of males, but by their own distorted conception of masculinity, a condition originally caused by their malignant mother's attitudes. In today's world many women prefer raising children without a male influence being present. This is because the "male" is rejected in a similar way as the woman (or mother) is rejected. Neither the father nor the mother have contributed to the creation of a positive superego or ego-ideal (Self-image). Consequently, both parents are demoted in the eyes of a malignant daughter.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“Until they do so they are doomed to labor under the illusion that their own mother's perverse and violent acts toward their being were acts of love and care. This is the situation that commences when a victim of abuse identifies with the object of its legitimate hate. It is a legacy that occurs when the superego rather than the conscience operates as the moral center.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“Obviously, mothers are older than the children they birth. They have experienced birth, infancy, schooling, illness, failure, success, dating, marriage, pregnancy, death and other facets of worldly existence. By the time most women become mothers they have already experienced abuse, fear, hatred and envy, not to mention self-loathing, self-condemnation, guilt and shame. Consequently, unless a woman is psychologically empowered it is unlikely that she has come to terms with the effects of these experiences and syndromes. By not confronting the dark sides of her own Anima and Animus she is unable to overcome her moral and emotional deviance and reintegrate her authentic Self-image. Rather than engage in a dragon-fight with her own negative Anima, and heroically emerge, she decides instead to become a terrible mother herself.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“We do not realize that, as a rule, male violence is merely a symptom of psychic violence perpetrated in the dark, as it were, by terrible mothers who go unpunished.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“...the rage that is aroused because their autonomy has been destroyed becomes a destructive drive in its own right and stimulates their desire for power. If nothing happens to relieve their situation – if they are not treated humanely, for example – children soon learn that pain itself is an effective means of gaining power over others. They understand that pain can alter their own mood, and they begin to assume that everyone and everything can be controlled by inflicting it – Arno Gruen”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“Anxiety and pain exist from the days after conception not after birth.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“If a daughter is forced to take sides in a divorce, things become more problematic. Her attitude toward one or other of the sexes will drastically alter at this time. She will either become more masculinized or less so depending on the behavior of her parents toward her. She may be inclined to identify with her father since his parting from his wife gratifies two strong subconscious needs. She, the daughter, is now the primary female in her father's life, and by sticking with him she wins a deeply desired victory over her "castrating" mother. On the other hand if she sides with her mother, for whatever reason, her conception of males is likely to considerably deteriorate.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“We realize that we inherit great personal suffering as a result of this weakened condition and from our inadequate but incessant attempts to regain the lost parts of Self. It is from our problematic and often futile attempts to regain Selfhood that life takes on its odd and distasteful complexion. It is the reason we become sadistic and/or masochistic. It is why we become troubled, morose, withdrawn, envious, compulsive, defensive, aggressive, insensitive, obsessive, suspicious, paranoid, acquisitive, competitive, delinquent, criminal, violent, warlike, brutal and tyrannous. Any external event that threatens or compromises the authority of our fragile and impaired Self is a source of fright and conflict. Our penchant for pleasure and terror of discomfort, challenge and pain stem from this dynamic. This is the reason soldiers cry out for their mothers at the moment of death in the trenches and on the battlefield. It is why the image of the female is so captivating, and why violence toward women is prevalent in history. It accounts for the over-sexualization of media and culture, for perversity, fetishism and fascination for womb symbols. It is the reason for child abuse, and explains our heinous desecration of nature and abominable treatment of animals. It explains the manufacture of supernatural gods and apollonian refuges where the cares of mortality cease. It accounts for our penchant for antihuman technology and our desire to build a sterile, post-psychological, post-philosophical dystopia in which we will not be troubled by emotions of any kind.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“The neurotic's opinion of himself is an introjection of society's image of him, rather than an authentic schema.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“The attempt to win the approval of the very people who in fact negate us as human beings becomes the driving force in our life – Arno Gruen (Insanity of Normality)”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“Indeed, anxiety is the means by which we become authentic.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“My clinical experience has shown that beneath the vicious persona of violent and destructive people is a great deal of inarticulate hurt with the fear of still further emotional injury – Carl Goldberg”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“We see from this that our desire to live morally is compromised by the relentless undermining of identity and will. And if happiness is not to be found by way of moral activity, we seek it wherever we can, finding it only spasmodically in fleeting sensual experiences. We soon become addicted to our banal pastimes since only through them do we find a measure of contentment.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“Our identification with the malignant father-figure means living up to an inflated image of masculinity which in turn warps the natural feminine energy within us.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“The stagnancy of energy, lack of interest in life and creativity, unproductiveness and mediocrity which beset so many people is not the consequence of their genetic and biological programming but of parental and social conditioning. The great Otto Rank acknowledged this and correctly rectified Freud's Thanatos concept. He, like several humanist and existential philosophers and psychologists who came later, realized that our Death Instinct or drive manifests itself in the very repression addressed throughout this book. Repression is a form of violence against the Self. Rank and his followers also realized that man's blind conformity to social norms and lack of differentiation from crowd-consciousness also serves to deaden creativity and productivity. They understood that the robotic organization man, behind his cubicle or on his cell-phone, slaving for some faceless corporation, fully embodies the Death Instinct.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“Despite the dissociation caused by the frontal cortex and superego, and prohibitions against deep feeling levied by society, our bodies and minds find ways of exorcising the memory of trauma. This process brings about moodiness, physical illness, mental incompetence, moral deviance and even psychic derangement. However, as a few perceptive thinkers noted, our physical and psychological discomfiture occasionally spurs us to ask deeper questions about the health of the world. Dealing with personal sickness can awaken a desire to cure the greater problems we see around us. It can lead us to realize the underlying and unseen connections that exist between personal crises and those suffered by humankind as a whole.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“Meaninglessness is a form of emptiness. So we ask what is emptiness? How does it come about? Do we feel empty because we try to fill ourselves without something that won't reduce in magnitude to fit our narrow confines? This is certainly what happens when we fail to realize what the Artist knows. He knows that when symbolic awareness awakens one transcends the limits of ego-life. Unlike the common "intellectual," one is not knowing more in order to fill a bucket, but experiencing more in order to have deeper understanding about oneself.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche

“Those who sought to undermine our will were free to do so. But those of us who seek to reestablish our sovereignty are also free to do so.”
― Michael Tsarion, Dragon Mother: A New Look at the Female Psyche