This power is derived from the deeply felt, unconscious images, but consciously she is apt to relate it to the ego, whereupon her influence becomes debased into personal tyranny. Whenever the unconscious subject is identified with the ego, the mysterious power of intensive feeling turns into a banal and arrogant desire to dominate, a vanity, and a petty bossiness. This produces a type of woman most regrettably distinguished by her unscrupulous ambition and mischievous cruelty. But it is a change, however, that also leads to neurosis.
So long as the ego feels subordinate to the unconscious subject, and feeling is aware of something higher and mightier than the ego, the type is normal. Although the unconscious thinking is archaic, its reductive tendencies help to compensate the occasional inclination to exalt the ego into the subject.If this does take place as a result of complete suppression of the counterbalancing subliminal processes, the unconscious thinking goes over into open opposition and gets projected onto objects. The now egocentric subject comes to feel the power and importance of the devalued object. She begins consciously to feel 'what other people think'. Naturally, other people are thinking all sorts of mean things, scheming evil, contriving plots, secrecy intrigues, etc. To prevent this, she must carry out counter-intrigues, to suspect and sound out others, and weave counter plots. Beset by rumors, she must make frantic efforts to convert a threatened inferiority into a superiority. Endless secret rivalries develop, and in these embittered struggles she will shrink from no baseness or evil means, but even virtues will be misused and tampered with in order to play the trump card. Such a development must end in exhaustion.
