Jungfrauen

The Jungfrauen, also called Carl Jung's valkyries or the maenads,[1] were a supportive group of women analysts (mainly based in Zurich) who were among Jung's first interpreters. They were early popularisers of his ideas.

Central to the Jungfrauen were Toni Wolff, Jolande Jacobi, Marie-Louise von Franz, Barbara Hannah, Ester Harding, and Aniela Jaffé. Other, more peripheral, figures were Kristine Mann and Hilde Kirsch.[2]

The German word "Jungfrauen" means virgins; in the present context, it is a pun. The adjective "jung" means young and the plural noun "Frauen" means women.

Public image

Mary Bancroft (who was not a member of the group) described the Jungfrauen as "vestal virgins" hovering around Jung, their sacred flame.[3]

Aniela Jaffé (who was a member) said at Eranos that they would throw off the stigma of the name of Jungfrau and would hover around Jung like “bees around a honey-pot.”[4]

It has been suggested that Jung's foreign travels in Africa were partly motivated by his desire to escape from the Jungfrauen.[5]

Ernest Jones records an attempt to lighten the mood at the 1913 Psychoanalytic Congress in Munich, when tensions between Freud and Jung were at their height, with the following joke: “Why do certain women go to Freud, others to Jung? Because the former are Freudenmädchen (prostitutes) and the latter are Jungfrauen (virgins)”.[6]

Feminist criticism

Whereas early Jungfrauen adopted Jung's views on gender wholesale, some Jungian women later criticized them. Naomi R. Goldenberg, for example, said that “Jungian psychology is a patriarchal religion within which I once lived and worked ... [for] years in a Jungian universe”.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ F. McLynn, Carl Gustav Jung (1996) p. 327
  2. ↑ B. Burleson, Jung in Africa (2005) p. 48
  3. ↑ P. Bishop, The Dionysian Self (1995) p. 267
  4. ↑ A. Jaffé, From the Life and Work of C. G. Jung (1989) p. 134
  5. ↑ B. Burleson, Jung in Africa (2005) p. 204
  6. ↑ Quoted in F. McLynn, Carl Gustav Jung (1996) p. 219
  7. ↑ Naomi R. Goldenberg, Resurrecting the Body (1993) p. 5 and p. 116

Bibliography

External links

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