I just read a new novel, Freud’s Mistress, by Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman. The story is based on speculation that has intrigued historians and biographers for more than 70 years that Sigmund Freud had an affair with his wife’s brilliant and beautiful sister, Mina Bernays, who lived with the Freud family in Vienna for more than 40 years. Freud’s wife and mother of their six children reportedly knew about the affair but kept quiet...

Carl Jung, a Freud disciple until they had a famous falling out, had his own long-term affair with Toni Wolff, an analyst. Jung built a tower-like structure behind his home and met Wolff there for trysts, both intellectual and sexual, while Jung’s wife stayed in the house managing their home and five children.

So what, you might ask? Freud and Jung played powerful roles in structuring psychological theory that lives on today. Their seminal work in defining masculine and feminine roles and behaviors, which continues to impact both genders today, was not just brilliant theory but reflected the deeply split model of masculine/feminine behavior that they lived. Today, we still carry these deep splits in our own bodies, forced to walk the tightrope between virgin-whore, mother-lover, smart-sexy. Packaging all that we are as females into one body requires huge leaps of consciousness.

Andrew Weiner, Elliott Spitzer and U.S. Presidents from Thomas Jefferson to William Clinton have publicly played out these deep divides, with wives on one side and illicit lovers on the other. We mortals watch and learn. How many more stories must we read of teenaged girls e-shaming their peers to suicide by using the slut card?

A few years back, then-college student Evan Strange dared to ask Chelsea Clinton how Monica Lewinsky’s relationship with her father, Bill Clinton, had impacted her. Chelsea, taken aback, told Strange he was the first one on her 70-campus tour to ask. (She didn’t answer the question, by the way.)

In truth, these are questions that need attention: What kind of daughters do men raise when their own sexuality is split between public virtue and private lust? How can a daughter hope to reach adulthood with a healthy sexuality and body image when too many fathers remain deeply torn about their true objects of sexual desire? What is healthy male sexuality, and why don’t we see more of it?

Chris Kilmartin, a psychology professor and author of The Masculine Self, has been hired by the U.S. military to help them stem the tide of sexual violence against female military personnel. As Kilmartin told the New York Times, the roots of this atmosphere of violence against women in the military (and in many other parts of life) are the “cult of hyper-masculinity” in our culture which tells boys that “aggression is natural and sexual conquest enviable, and (creates) a set of laws and language that casts women as inferior, pliable, even disposable.”

This culture permeates too many of our institutions and homes. How can daughters grow up to be sexual, sensual and whole when raised by father’s fed by this culture of hyper-masculinity. How do we become comfortable in our own skin and let all parts of our being flourish when our fathers, who play central roles in how we view ourselves as women and how safe or unsafe we feel in world, are too often deeply split inside.

The dissection of women into discrete, expendable, bits and bytes, played out literally by Freud and Jung with their wives/lovers and carried out daily in today’s culture, fuels the female obsession with our individual body parts and makes efforts to feel whole, lusty and real more difficult to achieve.

Changing this culture is up to every one of us. Knock down those towers, recognize that “prostitute” and “wife” can inhabit a single body. Let every father say “no” to hyper-masculinity. Together, we can define and live a healthier human sexuality that embraces and nourishes fully human females and males. Only then can we begin to raise daughters, and sons, who fully embrace their own bodies, lust, vulnerabilities and loves.

-Jacquelyn Jackson is a senior writer & regular contributor to A Beautiful Body Project in her segment "Stories From Our Bodies" She has had a long career in media, communications, and women's studies. Look out for her upcoming book.

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