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The mission of this book is to reclaim what the author holds to be the underrepresented and repressed feminine principle in psychotherapy. Stressing that the ‘feminine’ is in no way confined to women, but is an essential feature of both sexes, and careful to proclaim the equal importance of the masculine factor, she appeals for a more balanced dialectic between the two. Both male and female are ‘energic patterns of being’, present in all people at all times, archetypes to be constellated in both sexes and functioning as two opposed metaphors. Because this review will attend primarily to Sullivan's application of the feminine principle, it is essential to acknowledge her appreciation of the masculine, expressed especially in the chapter entitled ‘The Role of the Masculine’, and her affirmation of the value of the analytic frame.
While Sullivan's conceptualisation of the feminine is part of an upsurge in Jungian analytic theory, notably in the United States, (and evident, for example, in The Plural Psyche ), the particular slant, indeed the distinction, here, is Sullivan's alignment of the feminine principle with Jungian and Object Relations approaches to theory and practice. She refers primarily to Winnicott, whose ‘orientation comes from a feminine centre’, contrasting this with the drive theory of Freud, and perhaps it is not surprising that what we have taken to be the essential characteristics of Object Relations and of Jungian theory, without gender bias, turn out to be saluted by Sullivan as epitomising the feminine. Stating that ‘this book is about the holding - the nursing - that occupies the majority of time in any therapeutic venture’, she may appear at first to disregard the ingredients of challenge and rigour, but this is stoutly countered by feisty material from her own practice.
Sullivan's most creative and illuminating contributions from a feminine perspective revolve around the following: comparative concepts of the self in relation to the function of m