The Soul of Toni Wolff and the magic of the Feminine Psyche with Brenda Crowther, April 13th to May 4th

Dates: All Thursdays: 13,20 & 27 April, 4 May 2023 at 10 AM pacific / 7 PM CET
Location: On Zoom: All sessions will be recorded
Zoom Information: Once you have registered for this program, please ensure you are signed in to your account and return to this page to access the “Get Your Zoom Link” lesson at the very bottom of the page. The Zoom link will be added 2 weeks before the sessions. You will then also get an email once the Zoom has been created. You must register separately on Zoom to get your participation codes and reminder emails.
Faculty: Brenda Crowther MA, Dip analytical psychology – Jungian analyst
Academic Credit: Masters – 1 credits; Doctoral – 1 credits
Enrollment: This course is available both to enrolled students and lifelong learners.
Email our Registrar Veronica Saldias for more information.

Course Description:

The Soul of Toni Wolff and the magic of the Feminine Psyche

Since the publication of The Red Book in 2009, Toni Wolff has taken a higher profile.  She was the collaborator, friend, lover and guide of Carl Jung.  We must be thankful to her for supporting and guiding Jung through his experience of the collective unconscious, recorded in The Red Book.  Wolff had a fine and strong intellect, an enormous heart, and an exceptional quality of intuition.  She was a collaborator in the dangerous work to uncover the mysteries of the unconscious.  Wolff gave Jung boundaries, helped to stop his impetuous temperament from carrying him away.  She gave him the human support and courage to make an experiment with his own life.  As Helen Luke, the Jungian psychologist said:

No man can safely enter the dark gate of the shadow world without knowing that some deeply loved and trusted person has absolute faith in the rightness of his journey and in his courage and ability to come through.

Toni Wolff was born in Zürich.  Her activity with Jung begins at the turn of the 20th Century.  At that time, Switzerland had more fierce respectability than Victorian England.  Her relationship to Jung was tolerated but disapproved of.  Jung insisted on the openness of their relationship, she was more to him than a mistress on the side.  They researched together, went on holiday together, they listened to each other’s dreams, went to conferences.  For Sunday lunch she visited the Jung household and joined the family openly.  Although much younger than Jung, she died before him and seemed forgotten.  These four talks bring Toni Wolff to the fore, and her great importance in the development of Jung’s psychology.  We discuss her paper: The Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche.  These are: Mother, Amazon, Hetaira (friend) and Medial or Mediumistic woman.   

Session Topics:

• The spirit of Toni Wolff and the feminine forms.

The first webinar introduces Toni Wolff and her special qualities in relationship to Jung.  There is an overview of the feminine forms. 

• The Mother

This session looks at the mother structure in a woman.  This is not at all concerned with the physical mother; there are many ways of seeing this.

• The Amazon and the Hetaira

Here we look at the comparison between the Amazon who doesn’t count on relatedness for self-development, and the Hetaira, whose soul essence is in relationship.

• The Medium or Medial Woman.

The last session looks at the coming importance for the development of the feminine psyche for the future.  This is based on the mediumistic woman and her ability to see beyond the moment.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the four webinars you should be familiar with:

• The significance of Toni Wolff in the development of analytical psychology
• An understanding of the four feminine forms of the psyche
• A strong feeling for the importance of the feminine psyche in our times
• Be witness to the development and difficulties of an unusual though profound relationship between a man and a woman
• Be in a questioning and questing state about the path that relationships take and what is their mystery

Required Reading

Tony Wolff & C G Jung: A Collaboration  – Nan Savage Healy

Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche  – Toni Wolff  (Can be downloaded from the internet, as it is a very short paper)

Recommended Reading

The Red Book: Readers Edition  – C G Jung

The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul  – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee 

End of course essay describing the impact on your life of studying this material

• For BA students – 6-9 pages in length
• For MA students – 10-15 pages in length
• For PhD students – 20-25 pages in length

The rules guiding our assignment collection and grading process can be found here: Ubiquity University Grading Policy

Faculty

Brenda Crowther, MA initially studied Fine Arts, which included painting and art history and obtained her BA (Hons) in London. She exhibited her work for many years and spent some years in India and Asia studying the ancient sites and philosophies. After a teaching diploma, she taught in Art Colleges and Brighton University, where she was both studio teacher and lecturer in art history. Brenda had been reading the work of Carl Jung since she was 18 years old, and his way of using symbolic images influenced the development of her paintings and attitude. From an early age, her dreams showed that alchemy was her path, and she knew that Jung has researched this intensely.

Many years later she resolved to study the work of Jung formally and to train as a Jungian Analyst. As a Master’s degree was required to prepare for this, she decided to study French Philosophy and obtained her MA from Sussex University. Then the immense study to be an analyst began. This covered the history of religion, the myths and fairy tales of all nations, the origin and development of consciousness, archaic man, alchemical studies, besides the more conventional study of psychiatry and psychological complexes, and of course, case work. The richness of this study ended with a thesis of 50,000 words, which gave her a Diploma as a Jungian Analyst easily described as doctoral level.

At present, she prepares a book on her relationship to nature in both a symbolic and psychological way. She has written many articles and was editor of Harvest Journal for Jungian Studies in UK for six years. Recently she received the honour of the title of Fellow of the Guild of Pastoral Psychology in UK for her continued contribution to the field of Jungian psychology through conferences, articles and seminars.