The girlish nymph Echo would often entertain Zeus' wife, Hera, with long and distracting stories at Zeus's behest, so that he could go womanizing. As time went on, Hera discovered the trickery, and became so furious she punished the over-talkative Echo by taking away her natural voice, replacing it with the sound-alike repetition of another's words. Thus, all Echo could do was repeat the voice of another. The Echo Instinct is the feminine instinct for gossip. We need to remember that every instinct has both positive growth-oriented uses, and also destructive, negative uses.
In the case of Echo, the positive is the conviviality and favor with others derived from "sharing information." But in today's world of hater-blogs and negative media, we can learn from Echo, the destructive penalty for blindly "bearing false witness" against others.
Shared conversation is one of the joys of sisterhood. The dark side, like that of the sisters of Psyche, is when we don't think for ourselves, and "bear false witness" against others.
Narcissus was the attractive son of a river god and a nymph, and was known to reject all women who approached him.
Narcissus was walking in the woods one day when Echo saw him, fell in love, and began to follow him. Narcissus discovered he was being followed and shouted "Who's there?". Echo repeated "Who's there?" She eventually revealed her identity and attempted to embrace him. He rejected her and told her to leave him alone.
Heartbroken, she spent the rest of her life in lonely fields until she faded away, and nothing but an echo sound remained of her.
Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, learned of this story and decided to punish Narcissus, enticing him to the water’s edge where he saw his own reflection. He didn't realize it was only an image and fell in love with it. The voice of Echo continued on still, without her body, echoing his admiring words uttered at his own reflection. The sound of them, and the sheer praise heaped on himself as if it were given by an other, caused him to be so intoxicated with himself that he couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink and couldn’t move.
Until he too, died of self-neglect.
It was a fitting end for two narcissists – suited to each other in their self-absorbed immaturity - both mindlessly inattentive to their own behavior. This, of course, points out their joint lack of Observing Ego, or self-awareness and self-guidance. Meanwhile, they both lacked boundary skill and maturity in the sense that Narcissus had no compassion or empathy for those whose hearts he’d broken, nor did Echo have compassion for those whose lives she’d ignorantly meddled with. One might say that they deserved each other.
For, Echo had become what she was by talking too much, gossiping about the private matters of others, while responding to the destruction she’s wrought with something along the lines of “who. Me?”
So too, in real life the destiny of a man who doesn’t learn to use his Observing Ego to grow more mature will become ever-trapped in his own self-concern, and not find true love, while the immature woman who doesn’t learn to communicate her uniqueness with a simultaneous curiosity about the lives of others, also becomes nothing more than an Echo in the lives of men – soon forgotten. To which the male accused of heartlessly handling the parting of ways, like Narcissus, often flippantly replies, “Who? Me?”
I’m sure many of you feel frustrated and maybe even incensed by the ramifications of the first step of attraction and courtship in general, namely, “being beautful.” You can hate this fact of life all you want, hate beautiful people, and even hate those you know personally, but the reality is that men put a huge premium on beauty. But this is not the superficial beauty of a cover model.
Women don’t have to be that to master Romantic Dynamics. It is more about the woman’s way of setting her unique self apart from other women. She has her own unique style that appeals to men, which is not catering to or patronizing to either gender. It is just that it ought to be obvious to us all that in attracting another, we need to appeal to what they like.