A section of
C.G. Jung's "
Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" —
Jung's
catalogue of feminine archetypes, personality types, or ways of developing as a woman. The
Great Mother and other archetypes are discussed in this section.
The "Nothing-But" Daughter is someone whose identification with her mother is so complete that she has a hard time finding any self at all. She is the third of four types Jung describes. In Jung's view, the way this is resolved, if it is ever resolved, "there is a good chance of the empty vessel being filled by a potent anima projection."
"...she has to be literally abducted or stolen from her mother. Moreover, she must play the role mapped out for her for a long time and with great effort until she actually comes to loathe it. In this way she may perhaps discover who she really is."
In other words, she needs a man, or someone very like Jung's notion of a man, which is to say someone who is "out" in the world, working, achieving, someone she can project her own talents onto, and thereby develop her gifts (in a sense).
It is in this section that Jung suggests that the "great feminine secret" is emptiness, the unplumbed depths, the yin. Something few men can — or are willing to — understand because it is so alien to them. Perhaps not alien, but something they can see in themselves only with great unease?
It is an emptiness that may be strangely attractive, that a man may "lose himself in" and probably does something to explain how conflicted many men seem to be when it comes to "commitment," to forming any durable attachments to women other than their mothers.
source: The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung Violet Staub de Laszlo, ed. (The Modern Library: 1959/1993), pp. 434-35