materia

"There exists" Proffesor Flugel observes, " a very general association on the one hand between the notion of mind, spirit or soul and the idea of the father or of masculinity and on the other hand between the notion of the body or of matter (materia - that which belongs to the mother) and the idea of the mother or of the feminine principle. The repression of the emotions and feelings relating to the mother[in our Judeo-Christian monotheism] has, in virtue of this association, produced a tendency to adopt an attitude of distrust, contempt, disgust or hostility towards the human body, the Earth and the whole material Universe with a corresponding tendency to exalt and overemphasize the spiritual elements, whether in man or in the general scheme of things. It seems very probable that a good many of the more pronouncedly idealistic tendencies in philosophy may own much of their attractiveness in many minds to a sublimination of this reaction against the mother, while the more dogmatic and narrow forms of materialism may perhaps in their turn represent a return of the more repressed feelings originally connected with the mother"