The "good girl" complex: power, passivity, & accidental alignment with evil

When our authentic power remains unrealized, we are susceptible to unconscious forces with destructive potential.

“The spirit of evil is fear, negation, the adversary who opposes life in its struggle for eternal duration and thwarts every great deed, who infuses into the body the poison of weakness and age through the treacherous bite of the serpent; he is the spirit of regression, who threatens us with bondage to the mother and with dissolution and extinction in the unconscious. For the hero, fear is a challenge and a task, because only boldness can deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somehow violated.”

—C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation¹, par 551

“The Great Sandwina” lifting her husband above her head. Early 20th century. See more here.

I have been feeling nauseous all week.

The release of further inhumane details from the Epstein files—exposing survivors’ names and brutalized experiences to public scrutiny—has underscored the staggering hypocrisy of a system that protects powerful men at the expense of children’s and women’s safety, rights, and dignity.

Add that to the ongoing violence from ICE and the release of the most overtly public racist trope from the White House, and the machinations being put in place to “protect” a “fair” election in November— it is, as they say, “a lot.”

The nausea that so many of us are feeling is a clear symptom: our bodies are under threat. Nausea is a physiological response to fear; it dampens metabolic activity as part of a “freeze” response. And there’s a lot to be afraid of right now. The people in power are dangerous, and our collective refusal to simply comply with their demands is pushing them to greater and more egregious displays of power and violence.

Fear itself is a healthy response to a threatening situation. It’s what we do with that fear that matters.

“The good girl” complex

Among everything else happening this week, I hadn’t paid much attention to the release of the Melania documentary. So when I saw that the brilliant Dr Stacey Patton had written a post about it a few days ago, I was intrigued by her title, and had to know more.

The Real Reasons Why So Many White Women Watch That Melania Documentary

Patton’s thoughtful and incisive analysis resonated so much that I think it’s worth sharing a long excerpt:

(These white women) were watching a woman who appears to have learned how to remain materially secure and socially protected while standing next to volatile white male power. They were watching a version of survival that looks controlled instead of chaotic, polished instead of desperate, elevated instead of trapped.

But if you go one layer deeper, they were also watching a woman who seemed to answer questions many of them have been taught not to ask out loud. How do you stay safe next to a man whose anger fills a room? How do you maintain status when the person tied to your stability is also capable of cruelty? How do you keep your life intact when the system that protects you is the same cruel system hurting other people? How do you convince yourself that proximity to power is the same thing as having power?

Because for many white women, the documentary was not just about Melania. It was about witnessing a woman who appears to have mastered the art of emotional containment inside male dominance. It was about watching what it looks like to stand next to a man who is feared, hated, or controversial and still move through the world with protection, wealth, and social insulation intact.

And at a moment in American history where many white women are living alongside white men who are angrier, more radicalized, more openly hostile to demographic change, more resentful of women’s autonomy, more vulnerable to extremist pipelines, and more comfortable expressing racist or misogynistic ideas out loud, that image carries enormous psychological weight. Because it raises a quiet, dangerous question: If this is what white male power looks like now, what does survival next to it require?

I grew up in a small, white, conservative town. I live in a slightly-larger-but-still-small, white, conservative town. I am intimately familiar with these white men² who are “angrier, more radicalized, more openly hostile,” etc. During a peaceful protest in our town last year, a (conservative) white teenage male punched an elderly (liberal) white woman in the stomach. The white male rage in the air is as palpable as the exhaust fuming from their pickup trucks.

When these men, who are also my neighbors, smile and wave at me on the street, I am aware that as a white woman, I have the privilege of “passing” as one of “them.” Unless I tell them I am bisexual, that we have a trans daughter, that I voted for Kamala, that I do not support ICE, etc., I can be “safe.”

Of course the “good girl” in me very much wants to appease, to be safe, to fly under the radar. Despite being raised in a feminist household, I am a product of patriarchal, white supremacist culture. I can (and do) work every day of my life to address these internalized issues and to reassert my own sense of justice, power, and integrity, but I am no longer debilitated by shame around this complex. The shame itself would keep us locked into the hierarchy— as Patton says, these are “questions many of (us) have been taught not to ask out loud.” Speaking up, no matter how queasy we feel, is how we break the spell.

We also have to remember that in extreme circumstances, the “good girl complex” means literal survival. In violent systems, fawning—appeasing men in power—may be the only strategy that allows survival until escape becomes possible. For individuals who are survivors of sexual violence, or intimate partner violence, or an abusive childhood, this complex is likely to be more and more activated as patriarchal powers escalate: we know what there is to fear.

But there’s a hefty price to be paid in simply, as Patton says, convincing “yourself that proximity to power is the same thing as having power.”

Not even an anti-hero

“[It] is quite frivolous, superficial, and unreasonable of us, as well as psychically unhygienic, to overlook the reaction and standpoint of the unconscious.”

— CG Jung, The Undiscovered Self, para 561³

What is it that each of us is called to do, in the face of oppression and real embodied danger? My understanding is that each of us must consult our own psyche to know what is right for us— and if we fail to face our own fear, as Jung says in the epigraph above, “the meaning of life is somehow violated.”

Here is the dream of a factory owner living under the Nazi regime:

“Goebbels came to my factory. He had all the employees line up in two rows, left and right, and I had to stand between the rows and give a Nazi salute. It took me half an hour to get my arm raised, millimeter by millimeter. Goebbels watched my efforts like a play, without any sign of appreciation or displeasure, but when I finally had my arm up, he spoke five words: “I don’t want your salute.” Then he turned around and walked to the door. So there I was in my own factory, among my own people, pilloried with my arm raised.”

This dream, collected by Charlotte Beradt in her book The Third Reich of Dreams⁴, was a recurring one for the sixty-year old dreamer. Beradt says of this man,

“(H)e came to an accurate conclusion: that his attempt in front everyone to toe the Nazi line, his public humiliation, ended up being nothing but a rite of passage into a new world of totalitarian power— a political maneuver, a cold and cynical human experiment in applying state power to break the individual’s will. The fact that the factory owner crumbled without resistance, but also without his downfall having any purpose or meaning, makes his dream a perfect parable for the creation of the submissive totalitarian subject.'“

Beradt concludes, “He has not even become unheroic, much less an anti-hero— he has become a non-person.”

What kind of safety has this man bought himself? In denying his own sense of integrity; in aligning himself with the power of the oppressor; the factory owner personifies Jung’s “violation” of life’s meaning. In one variation of the dream, in fact, during the half-hour struggle to raise his arm, his spine actually breaks. Dreams don’t mince words.

In contrast, here is a dream from the US, which came shortly after the 2025 presidential inauguration:

“I am being chased by a group of angry men. I am able to duck into a space and get away from them, and in the dream I imagine that I have my steel mace (the weapon that we use for training). I started going through the exercises with the mace in my dream, and even though I wasn’t even holding the mace in the dream, but only pretending to, I felt stronger and more in control.”

The dreamer recognized that she was able not only to escape the “angry men,” but that she had internal resources to empower her. The dream image of wielding a mace was especially potent for her, as she related it to feeling stronger and more powerful. It let her feel less afraid of the patriarchal power she related to the incoming administration.

When we fail to connect to our own sense of power; when we are passive in the face of oppression; when we ignore our own soul’s urging to do what we know is right, we run the risk of “accidentally” aligning ourselves with evil. Still, at other moments, we may need to strategically align with the oppressor (cloaked in the Trickster archetype) to live to fight another day. I cannot judge anyone else’s actions. I don’t need to— our dreams will know the truth.

I can only listen to my own dreams, and their urgings. They tell me to move through my nausea, to brave my own fear, and to “take the risk,” as Jung says, in sharing my thoughts and feelings with you.

1. Jung, C. G. (1967). Symbols of transformation (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; Vol. 5, 2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1912)

2. I am grateful every day of my life that my brothers, father, and partner show me that there are nonviolent ways to live with male power in our culture.

3. Jung, C. G. (1957). The undiscovered self (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1957)

4. Beradt, C., Searls, D., & Mīkhāʼīl, D. (2025). The Third Reich of dreams: The nightmares of a nation. Princeton University Press.