Revising Jung: Constructing Goddess

In the post-Jungian years, there would be a number of individuals who would revise or amplify Jung’s theories with a feminist twist. Susan Rowland’s Jung: A Feminist Revision (2002) is integral into my understanding of the varieties of post- Jungian revisions. Not all post-Jungian revision would be useful and integrated by the Western Goddess Movement. The first major revision of Jung’s Anima would occur in 1935 when Esther Harding published Woman’s Mysteries: Ancient and Modern. Post-Jungian Susan Rowland cites Harding as a ‘key author’ in the Amplification of Jung’s Eros and ‘Feminine Principle’ (Anima). (Rowland, 2002: 56) Harding both embraced and revised Jung. Rowland writes: ‘Amplifying Eros as ‘the feminine principle’ enables her to cover a far greater and more powerful range of qualities than those envisaged by her mentor.’ (Rowland, 2002: 56) In Woman’s Mysteries: Ancient and Modern, which creates the first women’s post- Jungian analytical psychology written specifically for women by a woman, Harding continues Jung’s essentialist dualities with the Anima/Animus, but revised Jung by writing specifically to women and extolling the power of the female psyche; Harding writes: ‘The neglect of the inner or subject aspect of life has led, particularly for women, to a certain falsification of her living values.’ (Harding, 1971: 9) She presents an openly feminist model for the women who have recently been granted the right to vote and the introduction to Congress of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. Harding writes: ‘Our civilisation has been patriarchal for so long, the masculine element predominating, that our conception of what feminine is, in itself, is likely to be prejudiced.’ (1971: 30) Harding calls for women to find a way to connect with Jung’s Anima as Goddess and offers a rich and varied

11 _{While a number of post-Jungians contributed to the revisions of and continuation of Jung’s theories and models into} present day, this section will cite specific individuals who I recognise as key contributors to the transformation of Jung’s Anima to Goddess and Jung’s Anima Mundi to the Great Mother worshiped in the Western Goddess Movement. It is in no way an inclusive or exhaustive list of contributors writing during this time period.

cultural and anthropological history of numerous societies who worshipped Goddess in the embodiment of the Moon. Harding not only revises Jung’s essentialist theory by expanding the need to women, but she is also the first to amplify Anima to cultural and historical Goddesses providing her readers with a host of concrete manifestations of Jung’s intangible Anima. Harding’s work would serve as a source of inspiration for those who followed and demonstrate the potential in Jungian amplification; Erich Neumann would find great value in this feminist revision of Jung.

Erich Neumann, who studied with both Freud and Jung found himself ‘Jung’s anointed intellectual heir.’ (Paglia, 2006: 3) Although Neumann’s first recognised work would be what Paglia deems his ‘first magnum opus’ (Paglia, 2006: 4) in The Origins and History of Consciousness (1949) which included a foreword written by Jung, he is best known and certainly lauded in the Western Goddess Movement and by some feminist and post-Jungian feminists for his contribution The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype (1955). Beautifully illustrated with 74 figures and 185 plates, Neumann amplified (projected) Jung’s Anima Mundi archetype to that of Creatrix in The Great Mother offering the reader a vast array of images of Jung’s Anima Mundi as Magna Mater. Post-Jungian and popular mythologist Joseph Campbell, a colleague of Neumann’s, would follow Neumann’s amplification of Jung’s Anima Mundi and speak at great length about the Great Mother. (Campbell, 1949, 1986, 1988, 2001, and 2013) Christine Downing and EC Whitmont, both theorists in the emerging Western Goddess Movement, follow suit and continue the amplification of Jung’s Anima and his Anima Mundi (Great Mother) to Ancient pantheons. (Downing, 1981; Whitmont, 1982) All five of the authors in this study amplify Jung’s Anima (Goddess) and his Anima Mundi (Great Mother) in their memoirs thus continuing the post-Jungian amplification of Goddess and the Great Mother indicating both their prominence and relevance to adherents in the Western Goddess Movement. These post-Jungian revisions and amplifications of Jung’s original theories and models will be examined in greater detail in the following chapters. However, revision of Jung was not limited to the world of analytical psychology or mythology. Theologians would also engage with post-Jungian theory on the Anima as Goddess.

In 1971 Ann Belford Ulanov, the Christiane Brooks Johnson Memorial Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a

Jungian psychoanalyst, published The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian Theology. Rowland cites Ulanov as a ‘key author’ in the extension and revision of the anima/animus. (Rowland, 2002: 52) Feminist critics have chastised Ulanov for continuing Jung’s conception of the roles of anima and animus without critique (Rowland, 2002; Goldenberg, 1976); however, Ulanov did insist that ‘the anima is not to be equated literally with real women.’ Ulanov, however, did not become openly critical of Jung’s sexist language until 1994. (Rowland, 2002) This was followed in a work co-authored with her husband Barry Ulanov in 1975, Religion and the Unconscious, and Receiving Woman: Studies in the Psychology and Theology of the Feminine in 1981 as a mere sample of the nineteen publications in which Ulanov brings Jung and his Anima into direct conversation with theological enquiry through the field of psychology of religion. Writing alongside other post-Jungians such as David L Miller (The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods & Goddesses, 1974) and John P Dourley (C.G. Jung and Paul Tillich: The Psyche as Sacrament, 1981) Ulanov worked to shift Jung’s Anima (as Goddess) into to scholarly and theological discourse.

Not all post-Jungians would follow down Jung’s experiential-based path however. In 1973 post-Jungian Archetypal Theorists James Hillman published a significant article entitled simply ‘Anima’ quickly followed by ‘Anima II’ in 1974. A decade later, Hillman introduced his own psychology, obviously influenced by his training with Jung, in Archetypal Psychology (1983). Hillman presents a school of post- Jungian thought based on the concept of psyche (or Anima) as a non-religious, psychological soul. This differentiates Hillman from Jung’s Anima as numinous centre of the Collective Unconscious. Hillman distinguishes his theories from other post-Jungians within the field of archetypal theory because Hillman’s Archetypal Psychology favours archetypal analysis over archetypal experience which permeates Jung’s theories and some post-Jungian revisions; Archetypal Psychology centres upon the ‘[…] recognition of an archetype is a valuing process.’ (Lauter and Rupprecht, 1985: 10, italics in the original) Valuing perspective over substance, Hillman would move away from the archetypal experience that is the centre of Jung’s theories and models in favour of the archetypal analysis and value making his theories useless to post-Jungians who favoured archetypal experience as demonstrated in the source material. Other post-Jungians, however, would

make revisions that focus on the archetypal experiences exemplified in the five memoirs and analysed in the following chapters.

In 1976 Naomi R Goldenberg published an essay entitled ‘A Feminist Critique of Jung’. In this essay, Goldenberg is openly critical of Jung’s sexist language and models and calls for feminist scholars to ‘confront the sexism of Jung’s theories’ which have been ignored by his followers. (Goldenberg, 1976: 444) Goldenberg writes: ‘Beyond the overt sexism in Jung’s concept of the feminine, a feminist critique must examine the inequity of the anima-animus model of the psyche, which is never challenged by any of his immediate circle of followers.’ (1976: 445- 46) Maggy Anthony, who studied and authored Jung’s Circle of Women (1999) agrees with Goldenberg’s assessment but also comments that ‘It was no accident that he chose a woman to accompany him into the depths of his own unconscious […] for him women and the unconscious were synonymous.’ (Anthony, 1999: 103). A theory, however, can be inferred from Anthony’s statement: the initial circle of women surrounding and collaborating with Jung (such as Toni Wolff, Marie-Louise von Franz, M Esther Harding, and Jolanda Jacobi) were part of his Individuation process, representing Jung’s Anima archetype, and therefore unable to see the models and theories objectively. As ones so intricately connected both to Jung’s own Individuation and to the development of the central models and theories he puts forth in his analytical psychology, perhaps Jung’s circle of women were unable to see beyond their own contributions to the process itself as theory. It would be Harding who would revise Jung the most, but she never directly confronts his gender essentialism or sexism. Only the following generation was able to engage with Jung’s theories critically: perhaps the reason for a lack of criticism from the first generation of Jungian women lies in their participation in Jung’s development process whereas the second generation held an objective critical distance from Jung’s theories and models.

Goldenberg wasn’t only calling for a critical examination of Jung’s sexist language and models, she also recommends fundamental changes be made to Jung’s original gender-biased constructs; she states: ‘I would argue that it makes far more sense to postulate a similar psychic force for both sexes.’ (Goldenberg, 1976: 447, emphasis is mine) Goldenberg suggests that the Anima-Animus archetypes be removed from biological gender and the fundamental restrictions these forms of gender essentialism contain. Goldenberg’s call for a deconstruction of gender

from Jung’s theories and models would lead to important changes in post-Jungian theory that would be instrumental to the feminist adherents in the Western Goddess Movement. Rowland cites Goldenberg alongside Demaris S Wehr as a ‘key author’ in Feminist Theorist examining Jung from other disciplines. (Rowland, 2002: 84) She states that Goldenberg, while influenced by Hillman, differs from him in that she insists on the archetypal image ‘as a vehicle of cultural expression.’ (Rowland, 2002: 84, emphasis in the original)

Goldenberg is critical at a time where change is prevalent on political, cultural, and academic fronts. During this historic period the Equal Rights Amendment is passed by the US Congress in 1971 quickly followed by Title IX of the Education Amendments which bans sexual discrimination in the schools; Roe v. Wade in 1973 establishes a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion; and a host of publications by feminist thinkers exemplify the drastic political and social upheaval occurring parallel to a new shift in feminist religious thought, the inclusion of women to the American Academy of Religion, and a new emerging concept of the post-Jungian Goddess. The Western Goddess Movement evolves at the peak of the second wave of feminism in the United States and the writings and revisions seem to follow Goldenberg in droves. As expanded upon in much greater detail in Appendix A: ‘Timeline of Events and Publications in the Western Goddess Movement—1840- 2013’ the preponderance of significant literature demonstrates how the writings of the second wave of feminism aided in the expansion and amplification of Jung’s Anima (Goddess) and Anima Mundi (Great Goddess or Magna Mater) and how those models are carried forward into contemporary times. The importance of the historical and cultural setting for the development of the Western Goddess Movement is reflected in the following chapters.

Further feminist transformation of Jung’s Anima would be explored by a number of scholars in the 1980’s. Now openly critical of Jung’s gender essentialism, some of these feminist revisions would build on Jung’s perception of the Anima Mundi as the world’s salvation from the failure of patriarchy and logos-centred thinking in a movement Rowland calls ‘Goddess Feminism’. ‘Goddess Feminism’ will be examined in greater detail in Chapter 3; what is significant to note at this time is that ‘Goddess Feminism’ is a direct descendent of Jung. In Modern Man in Search of a Soul Jung writes: ‘It is from the depths of our own psychic life that new

spiritual forms will arise; they will be expressions of psychic forces which may help to subdue the boundless lust for prey of Aryan man.’ (Jung, 2001: 221) Goddess Feminism, as a reformation of Jung, could not have come about without making all the critiques and changes recommended by Goldenberg the decade before:

Feminist scholars must examine the very idea of archetype in Jungian thought if sexism is ever to be confronted at its base. Indeed, if feminists do not change the assumptions of archetype or redefine the concept, there are only two options: either (1) to accept the patriarchal ideas of the feminine as ultimate and unchanging and work within those or (2) to indulge in a rival search to find female archetypes, ones which can support feminist conclusions. (Goldenberg, 1976: 447-48)

Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen rises to Goldenberg’s critique in 1984 with her publication Goddesses in Everywoman and removes the anima/animus from bodily gender and gender essentialism. She presents anima/animus as elements of Goddesses for women, removing gender binaries as well as the inherent opposition in Jung’s original anima/animus construct. In the foreword to Goddesses in Everywoman Gloria Steinem, a renowned and vocal feminist, writes: ‘The author’s sensitive analysis of archetypes takes them out of their patriarchal framework of simple exploits and gives them back to us as larger-than-life but believable, real women.’ (Bolen, 2003 [1984]: xii)

A number of significant writers contributed to this transformation of Jungian Anima to post-Jungian Goddess including Christine Downing’s rebirth memoir The Goddess published at the same time as Sylvia Brinton Perera’s Descent to the Goddess (1981). Rowland cites both Downing and Perera as ‘key authors’ in post- Jungian Goddess Feminism alongside EC Whitmont (Return of the Goddess in 1982) and Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Goddesses in Everywoman in 1984. (Rowland, 2002: 56- 60) Through the projection (‘amplification’) of the Anima and the Anima Mundi onto existing cultural and mythological figures such as the Ancient Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses, these writers forever transform Jung’s Goddess and become an integral part of the dramatic growth of the Western Goddess Movement in the past few decades.

There was a perceptible shift in the 1980’s whereby a vast majority of post- Jungians used Goddess in their titles to concretise the transition from Jung’s Anima to a post-Jungian immanent/transcendent Goddess at the centre of various belief and worship in the Western Goddess Movement. Scholarship continues to posit Goddess and is exemplified in the works of Demaris S Wehr, Jung and Feminism: Liberating Archetypes, and Woolger & Woolger’s The Goddess Within: A Guide to the Eternal Myths That Shape Women’s Lives, both published in 1987, and Joseph Campbell publishes his interviews with Bill Moyers as The Power of Myth in 1988 which features the segment ‘Gift of the Goddess’. These works, among other influential figures who were not post-Jungian in the early Western Goddess Movement such as Merlin Stone, Starhawk, Carol P Christ, Sallie McFague, and Nelle Morton would lay the fertile ground for women’s stories of the post- Jungian Goddess. The 1980s also saw the birth of this post-Jungian movement’s counterpart—Feminist Archetypal Theory.