Toni Wolff
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Toni (Antonia Anna) Wolff (1888 -- 1953), was a patient and then a lover of Carl Jung. Wolff later became a Jungian psychoanalyst. The extramarital affair between Carl Jung and Toni Wolff was openly enacted through a course of ten years. Jung had been looking for the "anima woman," eventually coming to call Toni his "second wife", his legal wife being Emma Jung.
During her psychoanalytic career Toni Wolff published very little, but her best-known paper was an essay on four "types" or aspects of the feminine psyche: the Amazon, the Mother, the Hetaira or Courtesan, and the Medial (or mediumistic) Woman [1].
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[edit] Biography
Toni's relationship with Jung began in 1914. According to the film Matter of Heart, after successful psychoanalysis with Jung, she requested that they move to an intimate relationship. Jung agreed. Toni became a frequent visitor to the Jung house, working in the late mornings until the family lunch (from which she was excluded), and then continuing in the afternoon.
"Emma undoubtedly resented Toni's personal relationship with Carl, but equally resented his growing intellectual dependence on her because family demands severely limited her own time with her husband."
In the early 1930's, Carl Jung began to pursue alchemy. To Jung, the internal, private mental processes of alchemists paralleled the process of individuation. Toni Wolff became concerned that Jung would be marginalized if he continued a para-psychological focus. She invited a group of university students to visit Jung, including the brilliant and socially awkward 18-year-old Marie-Louise von Franz.
In her 2003 biography of Jung, Deirdre Bair[2] quotes von Franz as saying she intellectually replaced Toni Wolff in Jung's life, confirmed by von Franz herself in Matter of Heart:
"Her [Wolff's] big mistake was in not being enthusiastic about alchemy. It was unfortunate that she refused to follow him there, because otherwise he would not have thrown her over to collaborate with me. He would have used me just for translating, and he would have confided in her. But she wasn't interested. She was too much a slightly conventional Christian, and she refused to follow him."
Jung's long affair with Toni Wolff nearly broke his marriage. Toni Wolff remained close to Jung, and by the late 1940s a "gracious and generous accommodation had sprung up naturally between Toni and Emma." Eventually Emma accepted the situation, but she was never happy that Toni Wolff was a regular guest for Sunday dinner.
By age 60, Toni Wolff had developed arthritis. Three years later, she died, no longer Jung's friend or companion. Jung did not attend her funeral.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Whitney, Mark (1985). Carl Jung -- Matter of Heart, 1h45m documentary in which Toni Wolff is discussed and pictured.
- Champernowne, Irene (1972). A Memoir of Toni Wolff. C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.
- Davis, D.A. (1997). Jung in the Psychoanalytic movement. In P. Young-Eisendrath & T. Dawson (Eds.). Cambridge *Companion to Jung. Cambridge University Press.
[edit] Bibliography
- Wolff, Toni (1956). Structural forms of the feminine psyche. (Trans. P. Watzlawik). Zurich: C.G. Jung Institute
- Jensen, Ferne (1983). C.G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff: A Collection of Remembrances. Analytical Psychology Club.
- Kirsch, Thomas B. (2003). Toni Wolff-James Kirsch correspondence. Journal of Analytical Psychology 48 (4), 499–506.
