The Cinderella Complex

I have never forgotten reading this book when it first came out and now, at age 60, am ordering a copy so I can read it again. The book has wonderful, forceful prose designed to wake people up by shocking them into awareness. I still recall a passage that, if I remember close to correctly, accused males/the patriarchy of forcing women into silence like Chinese footbinding practices--something like that although this might not be fully accurate. Or perhaps it had to do with bending women out of shape by not allowing them to explore like men, etc. What inspires me to re-order it? Rage at dealing with still male-dominated chauvanistic churches in my home town in the South which I returned to from the North in order to assist my aging WWII vet father. To his credit, he urged me to go North at a young age to escape the Chauvanism. BRAVO, Dad! (But even YOU could have improved--ha! ha!)

It's a feminist classic and as relevant today as when it came out. I thought I was pretty feminist or 'post-feminist' even, but reading this book helped me uncover some pretty old fashioned ideas that were lurking in my belief system and influencing all kinds of decision making situations. This stuff is pretty ingrained in our society and needs to be thrown out!

This book, though written in 1980, still applies to every woman I know. We all suffer from The Cinderella Complex. Most women never change since they do not recognize the problem. Read this book so you will understand WHY you do the things you do. It really explains a great deal about why women are the way the are. We will never acheive truly equality with men until we understand ourselves. I highly recommend this book and plan on buying many copies of it to give to friends and family.

The Dionysian political/spiritual/sexual liberation theology of the Woodstock/Vietnam/Civil Rights 1960's in America led to the full flowering of the political cynicism of the Nixon/Watergate 70's. The moralistic materialism of the Ronald Reagan/Wall Street 80's led to the Silicon Valley-influenced psychological spiritualism of the Clinton/Oprah 90's. Collete Dowling, the non-feminist feminist writer and intellectual pioneer, coming of age in the center of this four decade cultural transformation period of Post-World War II American culture (with its pendulum swinging of consciousness between political astuteness and spiritual awareness) wrote this book in 1981. THE CINDERELLA COMPLEX is written from the central and centering vantage point of straight-ahead psychology; not politics or spirituality. It was designed for courageous women ready to reexamine their hearts and souls in the context of the true dynamics and hidden reasons for many of the dysfunctions and even existence of their most important interpersonal relationships. It is even more important now than when it was written.Dowling in actuality was among the first to successfully teach the general public some of the basic ideas of psychology and their relevance to their world, in those changing times, in the context of what freedom and adulthood really means. As it turns out, her metaphor of the Cinderella Complex--the desire to search outside of oneself for the source of inner emotional malaise or turmoil, and to hold a "prince" of some kind accountable for both one's maturity and rescue from the secret pains of independence--is perfect for all people, men and women. The Cinderella Complex, Dowling shows us, is the siamese twin of irony in life. It is the perfect nickname of the dynamic within people that creates fateful circumstances and negative, self-fulfilling prophecies in a person's life and relationships until its existence is acknowledged. And after it is acknowledged, it asserts itself in a person as an inner war--a psychological jihad--such that it makes the only war you know how to fight and win (i.e. a material-world or male/female relationships war outside of your inner self) irrelevant. Her writing and ideas, as she is saying nothing new yet saying it in such an important new way, sympathetically vibrate with many of the most basic tenets of Western religion. However, her non-religious, psychological perspective allows for a new level of inner healing. Even, if not especially, for those who, unrealizingly, have made a false idol/"prince" out of Moses, Jesus or Mohammed themselves, along with the living men in their personal lives. Anyone reading this, man or woman, will not just find themselves in it, either as they live now (as I did) or how they once was. You will see much of today's post-Clinton, Bush/Enron 21st Century American culture be revealed in its pages. And, you'll understand why the pleasure principle doesn't make people nearly as happy as many who use the Con

I am dissapointed at the previous reviewers who seem to have missed the subtle poignancy of this book. Above all else, this is a book about carving out a wholehearted, authentic existence. I am 23 years old and was not even born when these ideas were taking shape in Collette Dowling's head. However, they resonate with me in a way that no other book on "women's issues" has. I reread it often to vividly remind myself to hold nothing back--to throw myself into a rich and challenging life without insecurity, without fear, and without the need for anyone else, be it a parent, a lover, or an authority, to validate and lend importance to the things that drive me. Collette Dowling has articulated this idea in such an honest, poignant way, and I think that it's an important message for young women today, just as it was for the "baby boomers" of Dowling's own generation. Yeah, some of the slang is a bit outdated. But to focus on that is to overlook a truly unique and vitally important observation about how women can REALLY come into their own.