ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the characterization of archetypal feminine energy as containment/transformation references the very different work of two Jungian analysts: the more classical Jungian ideas of Erich Neumann, and the post-Jungian approach of Jean Knox. Knox argues that body schemas are comparable to what Jung referred to as the archetypes, while the internal working models are similar to the Jungian notion of the complex. When parents are non-responsive or tend to impose on their infant instead of responding to her/his communications, an image schema of force or splitting is activated, as opposed to that of containment. Relational psychology identifies the centrality of the process of containment for healthy individual psychic development, but it has little to say on the transpersonal aspect of the embodied, psychic act of containment. Neumann further points out that this process of feminine transformation pertains not just to the natural, but to cultural development as well. The transformative life principal is creative nature and a culture-creating principal in one.
