Walt Disney's animated film Cinderella, produced and released in 1950, tells a fairy tale known in almost every household. Cinderella — Ella — was born into a noble family but had a difficult life: her mother died when she was a child, and her father then married the widowed Lady Tremaine. After her father's death, she went on living with her stepmother and stepsisters, who treated her cruelly. Then one day she met a prince at a ball who fell for her at first sight, and in the end the two married and lived happily ever after. Yet this neatly resolved, fairy-tale ending was not something Cinderella won for herself; she merely endured, waiting endlessly for someone to rescue her from her plight.
The American psychotherapist and author Colette Dowling first put forward the concept of the "Cinderella Complex" in her 1981 book Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence, describing how women unconsciously become dependent on someone stronger (for example, a man). Repression and fear inhibit them from expressing their own ideas and creativity, leaving them simply waiting for that stronger figure to arrive, hoping that one day they might live happily ever after under his protection (Dowling, 1981; Saha & Safri, 2016).
In fact, many psychologists hold that women with the "Cinderella Complex" usually have other, deeper emotional problems as well — such as a lack of self-esteem and a tendency towards dependency — and that these are the root causes of the complex. Some women idealise men still further, forming impossible and unrealistic expectations of them; and these unrealistic expectations make it all the more likely that the sufferer will ultimately be emotionally hurt when reality falls short (Saha & Safri, 2016).
Most psychologists believe that the chief cause of the "Cinderella Complex" lies in over-protective parenting. Such parents resort to abusive controlling of their children; some go further still and criticise their children's independence, leading to over-dependence and a failure to develop sufficient self-worth. The child may grow up with a reliant mindset as a result: leaning on parents at home, and on friends or partners when out in the world. Beyond this, research has also pointed out that gender-oriented parenting can give rise to the "Cinderella Complex" (Anggriany & Astuti, 2003). Gender stereotyping has cast men in the image of being strong and bold in the face of challenge, and women, by contrast, as weak and in need of protection (Xu, Zhang, Wu & Wang, 2019). At the same time, some argue that the general social disregard for women also damages their self-esteem (Saha & Safri, 2016), giving rise to the "Cinderella Complex".
The story's heroine, Cinderella, has to fend for herself after the death of her birth parents, all the while enduring the cruelty of her stepmother and stepsisters, waiting for the day a prince will descend to rescue and deliver her. This combination of an independence forced on her against her will and an unconscious desire to depend on others forms the contradictory mindset of the "Cinderella Complex". Dowling (1981) noted that these women want to be independent yet are afraid of independence, and so they endure and wait for a man to save them. In truth, most people in adolescence experience this same psychological tension between independence and dependence. They want to be independent, to throw themselves into society and strive for opportunities through their own efforts, yet they also cling to a comfortable, easy life. This corresponds to the "Cinderella Complex": take, for example, women with higher levels of education — they already have the economic capacity to be independent and can live on their own, yet the practicalities of life, their emotional lives and so on still leave them feeling at a loss, and so they need to rely on others to look after them.
In the face of such a reliant mindset, everyone needs to find their own sources of happiness, to have confidence in themselves, and to seek success and happiness through their own efforts. That is the true remedy for the "Cinderella Complex".
Reproduced from The Psychology Society, Social Sciences Society, HKUSU; the content or title may have been edited. Original link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CCDDCqABWs9/?igshid=n8gxfp67g8ez
References
Anggriany, N., & Astuti, Y. D. (2003). Hubungan Antara Pola Asuh Berwawasan Jender dengan Cinderella Complex. Psikologika: Jurnal Pemikiran dan Penelitian Psikologi, 8(16), 41-51.
Dowling, C (1981). The Cinderella Complex: Womens Hidden Fear of Independence.
Saha, S., & Safri, T. S. (2016). Cinderella Complex: Theoretical Roots to Psychological Dependency Syndrome in Women. The International Journal of Indian Psychology ISSN, 2348-5396.
Xu, H., Zhang, Z., Wu, L., & Wang, C. J. (2019). The Cinderella Complex: Word embeddings reveal gender stereotypes in movies and books. PloS one, 14(11).
Comments
No comments yet — share your thoughts.