ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytic world was dominated by men. Both Sigmund Freud and Jung Chang developed their new theories in the context of a history and a culture where women were expected to play out specific “female” roles. This chapter looks at beginnings of psychoanalysis, emphasis on Jung and the women who worked with him, and highlights issues of gender and sexuality that are still unresolved areas today. It traces beginnings of Jungian theory around the feminine, and the dilemmas women faced as analysts and patients in the emerging profession. The chapter looks at work of two of Jung’s early female collaborators, Toni Wolff and Sabina Spielrein, and at one of his most important but forgotten patients. Partly as a result of dealing with patients’ powerful transferences, and because of the fear that boundaries are easily broken, theories that have developed out of the early psychoanalytic movement have formed themselves around a benign image of feminine power, that of the mother.
