ABSTRACT
In recent years many billions of words have been uttered on the fashionable topic of sexual equality and, in common with the ‘culturalist’ views which have dominated discussion of other psychological issues, differences between the roles and status of men and women have been squarely attributed to environmental and social influences. The traditional belief that women naturally differ from men has met with widespread rejection, it being argued that the relative scarcity of leading women politicians, composers, painters and generals is due to masculine repression and lack of feminine opportunity rather than innate feminine characteristics. As a consequence, it has become customary to exaggerate the similarities between men and women while blaming those disparities which persist between them on to the evils of social conditioning. This trend has brought Jung’s generalizations concerning the fundamental differences between masculine and feminine psychology into disrepute and has led in some quarters to wholesale rejection of his Anima and Animus postulates. It affords yet another example of disharmony between Jungian theory and the popular notions of our time.
