In the paranoid personality type the fear of transformation and change, both outward and inward, is expressed most strongly of all. This is not a fear of the new, it is a fear of change. If you could land in that “new” state straight away, everything would be fine. But change is what is required — painful, bloody change, and always with losses. And that is very frightening.
A Paranoid type tries to keep transformation to a minimum, but if he is truly pushed to the wall, and if there are logical, coherent grounds for it, he will go through with that transformation. And the most vivid process of transformation of all is giving birth.
The core of the feminist movement is made up of Paranoid types with a fear of change and of childbirth.
That is where the wish not to have children comes from, and the ideas of “women as men”, of unisex, of the equal sharing of results but not of opportunities. After all, giving birth is what makes me a real woman. Before the birth, who knows what I am like on the outside — perhaps inside I am a man. But the moment I have given birth, that is it, the transformation is complete. Otherwise it is liberty, equality, fraternity, and no roles at all. If I have not given birth, we are brothers; if I have, then I am already a sister.
You have already read about the rest of the fears in the previous chapters:
- The fear of hidden influence, of being acted upon.
- Of fulfilling their ideas and wishes, since that may destroy relationships with the significant people around them and lead to punishment.
- Of expressing deep, strong feelings outwardly (there are “enemies” all around, after all), of sincerity, of directness, of scenes.
- Of being predictable to society (“they have counted me in”)
- That everything is simpler than it seems (that the world is simple, kind and primitive).
- Of madness, of being inadequate or incomprehensible, and of punishment for it (especially in the form of losing the freedom of their ideas and wishes).
- Of not knowing something, of being inexact, uninformed or incompetent in the eyes of society.
- Of deception, of betrayal (in closeness), and because of that a fear of emotional closeness; of indifference and hypocrisy (from those close to them).
