An Androgynous Mind

昨天英國文學讀到 Virginia Woolf 的 "A Room of One's Own"，學到一個很有趣、很新穎、對我來說很有道理的觀點：一個偉大、完美的思想（mind），或者稱之為「心態」，是「雌雄同體」的。

在此擷錄一些她提到話：

《A Room of One's Own》

...And I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man's brain, the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman's brain, the woman predominates over the man.The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually cooperating. If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine, I thought....

Coleridge certainly did not mean, when he said that a great mind is androgynous, that it is a mind that has any special sympathy with women; a mind that takes up their cause or devotes itself to their interpretation. Perhaps the androgynous mind is less apt to make these distinctions than the single-sexed mind. He meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.... And if it be true that it is one of the tokens of the fully developed mind that it does not think specially or separately of sex, how much harder it is to attain that condition now than ever before.

這又讓我想到上禮拜莎士比亞上到的指定閱讀：Stephen Greenblatt 的Pscychoanalysis and Renaissance Culture (from "Learning to Curse") ...

文中引述一位法國作家寫的 The Wife of Martin Guerre 來討論何謂 Identity。

Identity，就稱它為「自我認同」好了，不過是反應外在的期待；這又關聯到佛洛依德的心理學理論。既然角色可以扮演，那自身的 identity 又要如何去尋找？

What is your identity then?

外界給你的價值，是你的自我認同嗎？

A male should be like this; a woman should be like this; a fine lady should be virtuous and elegant; a fine gentleman should be noble and polite...

有太多、太多外界給予自我的束縛、那種標籤與定位，想要把你放進一個模子裡，塑造出他人的期待......

就像 Prof. Kim 說的：

"Everyone says 'Just be yourself.' Then, what is the quote on quote 'Be yourself'? Can you really find yourself? What is yourself?"

一個人真的能找到自我嗎？

而人生，不就是一趟不止歇的探索？

一個摸索自我、發現自我、尋找自我，進而成長的過程？


Life is a mysterious adventure.
The only thing we know is that it is not a venture which we can easily give in,
Nor can we easily let it fly by...