Marie-Louise von Franz

On matriarchy from the book  Alchemy

  "Some years ago the State assumed control over water rights-water is a feminine symbol-in order to protect people since the water gets so dirty and unwholesome, and slowly it has acquired the right to issue laws to fight epidemics. If, for instance, there is some kind of plague, or rabies, then the State can issue regulations which did not previously exist. Formerly mankind was not so interested in people's physical and material welfare. If they died of the plague or were bitten by mad dogs, that was just a part of life and not important; the emphasis was on spiritual freedom while physical welfare was rather neglected. Over the last fifty or sixty years (note- book written in 1980, so make that seventy or eighty years) physical welfare has gradually become an important concern of the State, and with that it has by degrees become more and more the carrier of the projection of the mother, and less so of the father image. We are slowly and without noticing it gliding into a matriarchal situation."

psychology