ABSTRACT
In the early 1980s, I noticed a new phenomenon in my analytic practice. One woman after another came into my office saying, “I feel a kind of power I never felt before.” It seemed to just suddenly start happening, and it kept on happening. They were excited by this power and afraid of it. What might come next? They had trouble identifying what this power was. It was not a desire to wrest power from another person. It was not destructive. It seemed like a special kind of “woman power” that had been waiting in the wings, a kind of freedom to be themselves, to feel anger and hate as well as caring and love. Women were finally claiming the full range of their affects, even the demonic affects of the dark feminine. And such experiencing brought with it a new feeling of strength and effectiveness.
