ABSTRACT
The author introduces the term the daughter archetype as a basic concept for the woman as a subject for herself, a concept for female agency that otherwise is lacking in analytical psychology. The phenomenology of the daughter archetype is represented at all levels of psychic functioning. The images range from ego-representations to goddess-like Self representations.
Skogemann’s notion of the daughter archetype does not question our basic concepts, but it does question the use of binary-gendered properties as a metaphorical common denominator.
A presentation of the Sumerian goddess Inanna will serve as an illustration of a very different archetypal daughter-figure. Her title in the Sumerian-Akkadian era was ‘daughter of the gods’. (Ishtar was her Akkadian name.) Skogemann amplifies the archetypal imagery with an example of a modern superstar, the American Madonna, who has staged herself in an Inanna-like way, with a typical mixture of sexual and spiritual elements.
The notion of the daughter archetype is not limited to the postmodern gender discussion as it is also represented in ancient times in ways that transcends the classical binary way of defining feminine and masculine properties.
