Book Review of Toni Wolf & C.G. Jung: A Collaboration
Nan Savage Healy, Tiberius Press, Los Angeles, 2017
by Michael Escamilla, MD
Toni Wolff, (1888-1953), a Swiss analyst who lived from 1888 to 1953, is certainly the most enigmatic of the great figures in the history of Analytic Psychology. She has long been part of the lore of C.G. Jung’s life, where she has been known, depending on the decade, as one of his early patients, one of his first analytic collaborators, Jung’s mistress, and one of the most effective practitioners of Analytic Psychology. Nan Savage Healy, in her well-researched biography of Wolff, finally helps to shed some light on the life and work of this remarkable woman. Coming out a half a century after the deaths of both Wolff and her “collaborator” C. G. Jung, enough time has perhaps gone by that Wolff can have her story told without offending those who were most intimate with her and Jung, yet, at the same time, enough people who knew of Wolff or first hand stories about her could still be consulted, to help build a sense of who Toni Wolff was and how she has influenced the field of Jungian analysis and research. In her book, Savage Healy draws on many interviews with and source materials from analysts who worked with Wolff, as well as diaries, a review of Jung’s reminisces for what became “Memories, Dreams, and Reflections” and, perhaps most importantly, family stories passed on by Wolff’s immediate family members.
In her preface, Savage Healy calls Wolff her “spriritual grandmother” and explains that Savage Healy grew up in Los Angeles, in a “Jungian” household, with a mother who had been analyzed by an analyst who had, in turn, been analyzed and supervised by Toni Wolff. This raises a profound concept, rarely talked about, which is the role of how particular wisdom is passed on in the therapeutic world of Jungian Analysis. Jungian literature is full of theoretical treatises on everything from transference and countertransference to alchemy and complexes, as well as amplifications of different archetypes and symbols that occur in the collective psyche. But at it’s core, Jung was an early founder of a therapeutic treatment which, at it’s basis, involves a person going through an in depth analytic process with an “analyst,” who functions both as a therapist and as a guide on each individual’s journey to self knowledge. It is in these hundreds of thousands (millions?) of analytic hours that the bulk of Jungian work takes place, and these hours are, of essence, private. Yet, we can easily imagine that important bits of insight and wisdom have been passed down, in a linear descent, from analyst to analysand over the last hundred years. And if analyses are carried out in the crucible of persons coming to an ultimate understanding of themselves and their relationship to our world and our fellow humans, one can imagine as well that analysts practicing today are transmitting core knowledge (perhaps even at a nonverbal level) from the founders of Analytical Psychology. Given that Toni Wolff was Jung’s earliest and closest collaborator (following Jung’s decade with Eugen Bleuler and brief collaboration with Sigmund Freud) from as early as 2010, coupled with Jung’s practice that the earliest analysands be analyzed if possible by both a man and a woman, it is likely that only Jung himself has had a more direct impact (analytically or therapeutically) on those practicing Analytical Psychology in 2018. Thanks to the longevity of her work (over 40 years as an analyst) and collaboration with Jung, and her preferential focus on working as an analyst (rather than writing books), her impact on working analysts today, vis a vis techniques “inherited” (learned from one’s own analyst), might even be more profound than that of Jung himself.
Savage Healy’s book, in addition to helping the reader know more about Wolff, also helps to frame how much Analytical Psychology (or “Jungian Psychology”) was a group process, with a handful of important figures contributing to a particular overarching construction of psychological theory, uniquely forged by this Zurich “school” of Bleuler, Jung, Wolff, von Franz, C.A. Meier and their other collaborators who passed through (perhaps most notably, Neumann and Freud). Toni Wolff & C.G. Jung, A Collaboration helps to finally illuminate, formally, the contributions of Wolff to this “Zurich school.”
Jung’s Uncredited Collaborator
Savage Healy uses Wolff’s own theories (in particular her essay “Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche”) to cast Wolff as someone who lives out an archetype in relation to an other (in this case, the other was C.G. Jung). Research places Wolff as one of Jung’s early analytical patients, who he first saw most likely in 1910, shortly after Jung left his near decade of work as a psychiatrist (working with Eugen Bleuler at the Burgholzli) to embark on his private practice in the suburbs of Zurich. As best can be reconstructed, Wolff entered this work as a patient most likely dealing with a depression brought on by the death of her father, who she had been close to (but whom, through his prevention of her attending university, may have contributed profoundly to her professional frustrations). Wolff, who had not attended university but was an avid reader and had had a rich pre-university education, and Jung seem to have rapidly moved from a patient-doctor to more of a collaborative dialogue based on their mutual interest in psychological symbols that arose during analysis and in dreams and their appearances in different cultures and myths. Wolff seems to have had a special affinity, interest, and knowledge in Eastern cultures, which enriched Jung’s own studies. By 1911, Wolff is travelling, along with Emma Jung, as a participant in the 3rd Psychoanalytic Congress, which was held in Weimar, Germany. Emma (who also became an analyst) and Wolff are two of a very small group of women “analysts,” otherwise surrounded by mostly male doctors from the medical profession. Wolff would continue her entire career without ever going to university, yet she was clearly viewed by Jung as a colleague and collaborator from early on in their relationship together.
A Tragic Character?
Wolff is presented, ultimately, as a tragic figure in Savage Healy’s book, and one wonders whether Wolff would object to such a characterization. This presumption of the author’s part seems to be based on viewing Wolff as a mistress or would-be wife to Jung, who had to accept eventually that Jung would not leave his wife, Emma to formally marry her. Wolff accepts this role, living out the role of the “Haetera” (lover/soul mate) archetype or, at times the “medial” (prophetess, psychic seer) archetype in her relationship with Jung, eventually becoming bitter as Jung would move on to his studies in alchemy (which he would pursue with a new intellectual partner, Marie Louise von Franz) and Wolff would be left without material or spiritual partner and without the benefits of a family of her own. In her older years, Wolff is presented as teaching at the Jung Institute in Zurich, almost as a ghost-like character. Certainly, her central place in Jung’s life (meeting with him weekly at his home, or even more often for decades, travelling with him) and her being a woman, independent and unmarried, must have left her (and Jung) subject to constant gossip and confusion (was she his mistress? His “second” wife? These terms lose their meaning really, as it is clear that Wolff and Jung (and his wife) were determined to live their lives as they chose, without regard to public commentary). Moving to a more “archetypal” level, the author makes the case that Wolff lives out the “feminine” role of being present and critical in the formation of culture, but forgotten and unacknowledged in the HIStory books. I think this is not the case at all (von Franz, for instance chose to write and lecture extensively, and her voice and name are prominent in Analytical Psychology works) – rather Wolff had different priorities and interests, or at least we can entertain that she might have had different goals and wishes of where to put her energy in life.
What I think becomes clear in reading this book, is that Wolff relished her work as an analyst and lived a very fulfilled career in this regard. In addition to her primary work, which was the hour by hour work of analysis and supervision of countless men and women who came to Zurich for training, she played a leadership role in the Zurich Psychological Club, which functioned for decades as a de facto institute, where the ideas and theories of Analytical Psychology were developed and presented as lectures and discussion groups. She clearly was a leader in developing a theoretical understanding of feminine psychological development during these years. Many analysts and analysts in training praised her brilliance and compassion as an analyst, and it is intimated in the book that even Jung felt she was perhaps more talented than even himself in this regard. I see her not at all as a tragic figure, but as someone who overcame the obstacle of not having a medical education, to play a major role in the development and conceptualization of analytical psychology, and who was able to live out her life doing this work. Her progeny were the analysts she trained, and, as in the case of Savage Healy, her “spiritual grandchildren” now scattered across the world.
Influence on Jung
Toni Wolff & C.G. Jung, A Collaboration makes very strong arguments that, from 1911 on, Jung’s main “scientific” collaborator shifted from Bleuler (under whom Jung had developed a psychological theory of complexes) and Freud (who Jung quickly diverged from, with regard to the contents and drives of the unconscious), to this unique, largely self-taught woman, Toni Wolff. As Jung entered into his own confrontation with the unconscious and went through what might be considered a psychotic regression (or entry into the unconscious depths) it appears he was blostered by Wolff (who seems to have had the intuitive and intellectual capacity to work with him on the archetypal and emotional material which came up) and by his wife and family (Emma Jung and the day to day work as a consulting doctor). Whether or not the relationship with Wolff was also romantic, sexual, or “incarnated”, is not really known with any certainty, but clearly at a psychological level Jung was contained by Wolff during this time. Concepts of anima, animus, shadow, and the archetypal images of the Red Book all took form during this “collaboration” between Jung and Wolff. Wolff seems to have been eminently comfortable working with the images and archetypal material which emerged during this work. Most likely, she helped Jung to ground himself and be seen and “held” during this difficult work. Through descriptions from her later patients, we get glimpses of how she likely worked intuitively with Jung himself as he encountered the unconscious. Her approach was a mixture of empathic connection, common sense, and analytic curiosity, backed by a wealth of knowledge of how symbols have appeared in cultures and myths around the world.
Further developments of the decades of the 1910s and 1920s most likely included the working out the theory of psychological types and functions. Others contributed to this as well, but Savage Healy makes the case that the organizing of the material may have come primarily from Wolff. An interesting argument is also made regarding the psychological “types” of Wolff and Jung.. Relative to each other, Wolff is presented as profoundly introverted in comparison to the more extraverted Jung, and as having more of a “thinking” function in sorting through material, in comparison to Jung’s more emotion based functioning (at least at this stage in his life). It is interesting to view Jung (who is usually thought of as a “thinking introvert”) from this perspective, and to observe that within this relationship Wolff and Jung actually played roles opposite from the standard stereotypes of feminine and masculine which were prevalent in the early twentieth century.
As in most any passionate relationship (and whatever the carnal reality of their relationship may have been, their intellectual and psychological relationship was passionate and productive), things cooled off with time. Jung eventually shifts to a focus on alchemy and Gnosticism, seeking non-Christian elements within the unconscious which he feels drawn to as a balance to the Christian myth. His great collaborator on this last stage of his journey was the classics scholar Marie Louise von Franz, and Wolff seems to have been quite emphatically uninterested in this work. There is certainly a sadness in such “partings”, but by all accounts, the mutual respect between them endured throughout their lives.
Toni Wolff & C.G. Jung, A Collaboration also contains a number of photographs, of Toni Wolff through the years, and a few of her with Jung. I have heard some criticism, perhaps well founded, that the cover photo, of Wolff and Jung dressed as country “bumpkins” would have horrified Wolff herself, who was known for being an elegant dresser. A more appropriate cover would probably have been another illustration in the book, on page 152. It is an oil painting of her from 1927, sitting with her hands folded in her lap, wearing a simple blouse and a pendant on a string around her neck. She is a beautiful woman, with an intelligent and compassionate visage, looking directly at the painter (and viewer). The painting is from the Psychology Club of Zurich, where she served as president for decades. The analysands of Wolff and Jung, and other analysts, gathered here for years, both to learn and to socialize, and it was in this environment that Analytical Psychology grew and flourished, outside of the cold an rigid halls of academia and universities. The fact that it is a painting which most seems to capture her essence is also telling. Wolff’s great work of a lifetime was in her relationships – with her family (her parents, sisters, nieces and nephews), her friendships, her collaboration with C.G. Jung, and her many analysands. I imagine we can only really “see” her through the lens of relationship. And from that perspective, her life was far from tragic. Indeed one could say she found her individual, unique, and vital path. As one of her “spiritual grandchildren” I am grateful for this book being written.
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