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Jungian Feminists

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The term “Jungian feminists” can be applied to feminist Jungian analysts and to feminist scholars of Jungian theories.

The theories of Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) about the psychology of women and the feminine were radical for their time, but it is important to set them in context and note that the major goal of first-wave feminism – women’s universal suffrage – was not achieved in his Swiss homeland until 10 years after his death. In Jung’s lifetime, the dominant societal view was that women were either inferior to men or “equal but different” with biologically determined spheres of influence and role.

Jung was aware that as a man there were deficiencies in his understanding of women (Jung 1927/1970, p. 117; para. 240). Nevertheless, he was often blind to his own social conditioning. Jung considered that our inner relationship with the contra-sexual “other” in the psyche – for a man his anima, for a woman her animus– was fundamental for psychological health and for constructive...

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Correspondence to Vivianne Crowley .

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Crowley, V. (2020). Jungian Feminists. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24348-7_200080

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